


Squares, Part I.

by orphan_account



Series: Brothers [18]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: AU, Brothers, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-18
Updated: 2012-08-18
Packaged: 2017-11-12 08:58:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/489091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki is lying on the kitchen floor – leg broken, pride obliterated, and completely soaked from head-to-toe – and Thor is standing in the doorway with a fucking hard-on. Loki-centric, part of the Brothers!verse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Squares, Part I.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm going to start this off by saying that this is a birthday present for my dearest, most darling [Paula](http://www.petitly.tumblr.com), who is honestly one of the best friends I could ever ask for and my spirit animal and my everything wonderful in the world. Uhm, there's a reference to The Notebook in here that may or may not be too understandable unless you've read the book or seen the movie. Also, have some song suggestions: Hey Ya, Matt Weddle; Valerie, Amy Winehouse; Hero, Enrique Iglesias; If it Makes You Happy, Sheryl Crow. Enjoy.

He calls him ' _turtledove_ '. It's the first pet name he rewards him with after they've officially become a couple, and Loki thinks it's the sweetest thing he's ever been called in his life.

Turtledove.  _Turtledove_. It may be sappy and disgusting and altogether too sugary, but it's also a seal of authenticity in the way that it's Loki's and Loki's alone – Tony wouldn't ever call anyone  _but_  him ' _turtledove_ ', nor would he ever utter the name loudly or in the presence of others. ' _Turtledove_ ' is something he whispers to him when they sit close together, something he tells him when they're on the phone late at night, something that will show up in their texts and something that will wake Loki up once the sun has risen – "Good morning, turtledove."

And Tony likes to find new ways to tell him he loves him on [Google Translate](http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8172104/19/) and in language dictionaries all over the Internet, likes to call him just to tell him, " _Je t'adore_ ," and sweep him up into his arms and laugh, " _Te amo_ ," and pinch his side and whisper into the space right below his ear, " _Ich liebe dich_ ", and Loki knows that every time Tony starts speaking words that sound unfamiliar on his tongue but for the inflection with which he says them, he's letting him know that three words as common and English as ' _I_ ', ' _love_ ', and ' _you_ ' aren't enough to describe what he feels for him. And he knows that Tony knows he feels the same when he texts him whole paragraphs about his heart in French, the opening lines of which almost always say, " _Vous avez mon coeur, mon amour; chaque partie de ca, toujours._ "

Tony's also learned not to kiss him on the lips after they've woken up together, not when they have morning breath and when Loki will threaten to kick his ass if he puts his mouth anywhere near his before he's brushed his teeth. Instead, he'll touch their foreheads together or nuzzle Loki's nose, and he'll laugh to himself every time Loki rewards him with a smile or inches across the two centimeters of space separating them to fold himself into his body. Loki hardly ever hesitates to do the latter, because Tony is a fucking furnace in the morning and will always drag him into the sweetest and warmest of embraces when he asks for them, and that's kind of the most perfect thing in their relationship Loki can think of.

Actually, he thinks that about almost everything in their relationship. Isn't that funny?

* * *

October turns out to be an awfully rainy month. This is what Loki finds himself thinking when he comes home one Thursday afternoon, drenched and chilled to the bone and curly-haired and not at all ready to head off to work in an hour and a half. He isn't greeted by anything or anyone when he enters his house, not a hulking mountain of a brother or furry firecracker of a dog or a grand mess to pick up or the sweet sounds of Led Zeppelin and Eminem blasting down the hallway. The shower isn't running. There's no hazardous waste spilling from the kitchen. Everything is perfectly, insanely,  _impossibly_  quiet, and Loki actually has to pause and make sure he's alive and/or conscious when he realizes this.

He's halfway through the thought that he might have dreamt up the past two months of his shared residence with Thor when the fact that Fenrir isn't all over his legs and making gravity the most awful thing to ever exist really registers to him, and it takes him all of two seconds to put together that  _one_ – the husky isn't in his room, because if he was, he'd be attacking the door quite noisily, and  _two_  – he could be absolutely  _anywhere_  at the moment. And here's what his mind says to him when that little gem of dread crosses it:

_1\. Think about every place in your neighborhood Fenrir could possibly be._

2.  _Make that your whole town._

3. _Think about him lost in the rain,_

4.  _or maybe about him alone and crying for you,_

5.  _or even about all the shitheaded little girls and boys that will find him and make him their own –_

6.  _but how unrealistic is it to dream of somewhat bittersweet circumstances when they can so much more easily be just bitter?_

7.  _He probably got ran over by a car._

8.  _It would make sense in this weather._

9.  _He probably got ran over by a car._

10.  _He's dead._

Loki's dropping his backpack to the floor and rushing into the kitchen faster than you can say ' _sports utility vehicle_ ', practically ripping the back door open and stepping onto the patio just as quickly, and lo and behold – there is his dog, sopping wet and gallivanting around in the middle of the backyard like something straight out of a Disney movie complete with animals miraculously performing musical numbers, mud licking up to his belly and coating his legs and muzzle, body a lean, mean, too-happy-to-be-playing-in-this-damned-October-rain machine. His food bowl is devoid of kibble but full of rainwater – an observation that lets Loki know that Fenrir's been out here since before the angels began what's come to be their daily Nicholas Sparks marathon and decided to drown the Earth (and by  _the Earth_ , I mean  _Sidney_ ) in their tears. And that means that Thor let him out earlier and neglected to bring him back inside before Allie's parents forbid her from seeing Noah. And that means that Thor's probably going to get a major verbal ass-kicking sometime in the near future.

And you know, that's something Loki has to remind himself is okay in this household –  _his_  household. Ever since Saturday and the too weird, too honest, too gooey heart-to-heart/conversation/jumble of words and feelings-fest that occurred between him and his brother, Loki's been having what's close to an identity crisis every time he and Thor interact, which is often when he's the primary breadwinner, cook, and rule-maker in the house and Thor is as hungry and as clueless as he's always been. He'll ask himself upon discovering a dirty sock in his bathtub or finding himself faced with the responsibility of doing the dishes for the bajillionth time,  _Is it worth it to get angry over this?_. And the voice inside him – his logic or his conscience, maybe – will say,  _Not angry – disappointed_. And Loki will wonder how to act disappointed without ripping Thor a new asshole and blowing the situation out of proportion like he would have before, and that usually leads to him questioning his state of being and his integral personality traits and the balance of the universe, and  _that_  makes him realize even more how awful a person he truly is, and he  _still_  can't make a decision regarding Thor without calling Frigga for advice. He lives a sad life.

All that confusion and indecisiveness doesn't apply to this situation, though, because Fenrir is to Loki what a five year-old son is to a very adoring mother, and can you imagine how pissed off a mother would be if her child's babysitter left him out in the dirt and the rain for what has to be the  _third_  time since they were unofficially hired? If you need a little help, you can think of every mother with conviction that's ever graced the face of history, mothers like Demeter and Isis and Alexandra of Russia.

Yeah. It's  _that_  serious.

Anyways, what happens next is so ridiculous and unlikely and  _fast_  that Loki can't even believe it's transpired until he's screaming vulgarities at the top of his lungs and fighting the onslaught of tears that sting and threaten to fall from his eyes. Keep in mind that he's a naturally graceful human being and that he's been one for as long as he can remember as I describe him taking a step and a half across the rain-slick patio, legs tense and moving quicker than what's really safe in this weather, before friction suddenly decides to make itself scarce in his world and send his left foot flying forward and his right leg crumpling beneath him like a folding chair or a bendy straw, and  _fucking_ _ **youch**_  –  _that's_  what you call pain, that viper of fire crawling down his calf and rendering him scarily weak in every joint in his body.

At first, it almost doesn't register to him that anything wrong has happened, and it's like he's stuck in a thriller movie in the way that everything freezes and goes all still and silent and _nothing_  around him, but life isn't too slow to catch up to him, and in seconds, Loki's being hit with the full, unrelenting force of the pain that's shooting up and down his calf and thigh, with the cripplingly humiliating realization that he's absolutely soaked and sitting in the middle of his patio with what's probably a broken leg, and he's  _shrieking_ , shrieking for Lord knows who and Lord knows what, shrieking, " _Oh my fucking God, oh my_ _ **God**_ _, ohmy_ _ **God**_ _ohmy_ _ **God**_ _…!_ "

As I'm sure you can all tell, he is  _fucked_.

Loki's stuck like on the ground like that for about two minutes. Fenrir gallops over to him and proceeds to butt his dripping muzzle into his face and neck the moment he's turned into a banshee, but with the exception of the company of his husky, Loki's flying solo on his trip to the fiery, painful, stinging, painful, loathsome, and did I mention  _painful?_ depths of Hell. He tries lying down on the smooth, cool cement beneath him to alleviate his distress, but his struggle to straighten his right leg out only has his tears falling that much more easily and his cries escaping him more pitifully than they were before, if at all possible.

After Fenrir starts to rasp his tongue over his face and whimper his worry, Loki decides that maybe he should try to help himself – a skill he's been honing for the past fourteen years or so and  _still_ has yet to master – instead of catching something nasty like pneumonia and dying or letting his leg set improperly or inadvertently causing yet  _another_  horrible thing to happen (which shouldn't be too hard, considering the fact that it's  _him_ ).

First, he turns himself halfway onto his stomach and plants his hands flat against the pavement, spitting curses and blinking tears out of his eyes all the while. Then, he drags himself across the patio in the direction of the back door, which is halfway open and kind of like a portal to Heaven when he's pawing through what could easily pass as a swamp in the ninth circle of Hell. This, my friends, is one of the most physically excruciating things he's ever had the displeasure of enduring, and even though most of the pain and negativity running rampant inside him is something he's subconsciously amplifying (because if Loki is  _anything_ , he's a drama queen and a pessimist of the highest order), there's no doubt that his soul has been broken when he's halfway inside his kitchen and resting his head against the linoleum floor, sobbing more out of disgrace than anything else.

And honestly, what's worse than the fucking bonfire in Loki's knee are the thoughts that are brutally raping his state of mind, thoughts of how much  _harder_  things are going to be for him in the immediate-to-near-ish future. Who's going to clean up the house when he has a broken leg? Who's going to take care of Fenrir (who pretty much  _hates_  any human being with the exception of Loki, Tony, and Frigga, by the way) when he has a broken leg? Who's going to cook when he has a broken leg? How is he going to drive to class when he has a broken leg? How will he work when he has a broken leg? How is he going to do  _anything_  but limp around on crutches for what could be over a  _month_  when he  _has a_ _ **broken leg**_ _?_  These are the questions that are putting his teardrops on the floor right now.

Loki's about to take on the dreadful task of dragging the rest of his body into the kitchen when he hears footsteps like thunder trampling down the hallway and the voice of his brother calling his name, frantic and confused – " _Loki?_ " – and he raises his head just in time to see Thor scramble into the kitchen, half-fucking-dressed, hair a grand mess, and sporting a hard-on.

Yes, dear reader, you  _did_  read that correctly.

Loki is lying on the kitchen floor – leg broken, pride  _obliterated_ , and completely soaked from head-to-toe – and Thor is standing in the doorway with a fucking hard-on. A  _hard-on_. If this isn't some sort of acid dream or a cruel joke his mind has played on him, Loki would very much like to  _die_  right now, please and thank you.

"What happened?" Thor practically roars at him, rushing over to where he's sprawled across the linoleum. Loki tries to focus on giving his brother an answer as the man hovers over him, his clear blue eyes searching his face and spying out any visible injuries he might have, but he  _cannot stop_  looking at the massive boner tenting the front of Thor's sweatpants and  _oh my_ _ **God**_ , his face is probably redder than a goddamn beet and his mouth is hanging open in absolute mortification and his mind is kind of  _exploding_  on itself right now and his knee is still a thing that exists and is screaming at him and this may very well be the most embarrassing thing that's ever happened to him, even more so than that time Tony tried to suck him off through his underwear and Thor decided to pull a Kool-Aid Man on them (minus the ' _oh, yeaahhh!_ ', of course).

"I-I think I broke my leg," he eventually manages to whine in response, his voice higher than usual and straining in his pain, and as soon as the words ' _my leg_ ' are leaving him, Sif is peeking into the doorway, clad in one of Thor's gargantuan football shirts and what appears to be nothing else, and it hits Loki like a fucking meteor that Thor left Fenrir outside because he was having sex with Sif, that Thor didn't greet him when he came home because he was having sex with Sif, that Thor didn't hear him when he first started wailing his pain because he was having sex with Sif, that Thor has an  _erection_  because he was  _ **having sex with Sif**_. And this whole situation is suddenly  _so_  much worse – not because  _Sif_  is seeing him broken and wet and lower than an amoeba on the List of Organisms That Are Important and Have Presence in the World, but because Thor was  _having sex with her_  while he was in a twenty mile radius of him.

"What were you doing?" Thor asks him, and when he puts his hands on Loki – oh  _God_ , when he puts his  _hands that have been touching Sif in private fucking places_ _ **on Loki**_  – Loki can't stop himself from breaking into the most hysterical fit of sobs and tears, can't stop himself from laying (more like  _clunking_ ) his forehead against the floor and just  _shrieking_  into it, because he's in nearly unbearable pain and did I mention that he's fucking  _soaked?_  and he's freezing cold and Thor and Sif were  _ **having sex**_   _in his house_  and they're both half-naked and they're  _staring_  at him and Fenrir is in desperate need of a bath and  _really_  – this day cannot get any worse.

"Oh my God, Loki, calm down,  _please_ , calm down, oh my  _God_ ," Thor starts rambling almost as soon as Loki starts howling like something out of a horror movie, and when Loki looks up at him, his cheeks dripping with tears and flushed with emotion and his features contorted into an expression as ugly as it is horrified, he gets this determined-yet-frightened look on his face and declares, like a general to disillusioned troops, "I'm going to fix this."

And it turns out that today actually  _can_ get worse, because it  _does_  when Thor clumsily maneuvers Loki into his arms and lifts him off of the ground like he's nothing more than sopping ragdoll. Loki can't help but instinctively start to flail in his brother's grasp – an action that effectively puts him in even  _more_  pain and has him choking on his tears and clinging to Thor like the man's his goddamn lifeline. Let's not forget that Thor doesn't have a shirt on and may or may not  _still_  have a stiffy.

Once Loki's stopped writhing and has resigned himself to just resting his brow against Thor's hair-covered chin and crying softly, Thor turns to a wide-eyed and slack-jawed Sif, drawing a soft whimper and a hiss out of Loki when his leg swings around a little less than gently, and says, "Can you grab my keys and hold the door open?"

"Can you put some fucking clothes on and get my dog back outside?" Loki roughly interjects before anyone can move, and there's this godawfully uncomfortable moment after he's spoken where Thor and Sif just  _stare_  at him as if he's turned blue and sprouted wings or something, because  _oh!_  – he can speak words other than ' _augh_ ' and ' _fuck you_ ' when he's injured. He levels his stormy, damp green eyes at them when it becomes apparent that they're not going to do anything without him  _shoving_  them to, sniffing wetly and adding in an unnecessarily bitchy tone, "Preferably  _now_ -ish?"

Always count on Loki to be encouraging.

After a million and a half years of awkwardness, Thor carries Loki into the living room and temporarily sets him down on the sofa so that he and Sif can make themselves decent (and possibly finish what Loki's accident interrupted). As soon as they've scurried out of sight, Loki grabs the wireless phone sitting on the end table beside the sofa and dials one of the only numbers he knows by heart with shaking fingers and a throat full of sobs and hiccups, pressing it to his ear as he squeezes his eyes shut and tries to breathe slowly.

Tony picks up before the second ring is even over.

"Hello, turtledove," he's drawling into the mouthpiece the moment he's answered the phone, and because Loki's allergic to comfort and affection in a way that makes him tear up whenever it's given to him, he starts to cry harder and sniffle louder than he already is at the pet name.  _Of course_ , Tony's demeanor does a complete one-eighty once he hears him, and his voice is urgent and panicked when he asks, "Are you crying?"

Loki pinches the bridge of his nose and rubs the moisture out of his eyes, struggling with the knot of emotion in his throat for thirty seconds or so – just enough time to drive Tony insane with worry – before he concedes, "I'm pretty sure I broke my leg while Thor was having sex with Sif." He only realizes how shitty (ergo  _fitting_ ) his explanation is after it's left him, but he doesn't have any time to amend or add to it, because Tony's on red alert and close to demolishing the whole  _universe_  the instant he hears ' _broke my leg_ '.

"I'm coming to get you," Tony says almost immediately, soft, rustling sounds of movement following him over the line. "Don't move, baby, I'll be there in a hear–"

"Don't," Loki cuts him off with a loud, nasty-sounding sniff, running his fingers through his hair and staring at the ceiling as he tries –  _still_  – to rid himself of the embarrassment and the terror that's making his limbs and lips quake and tremble. "Thor and Sif are getting dressed, and I think they're going to take me to the hospital when they're done."

There's a short stretch of silence, then, only broken when Tony asks, his tone spectacularly unimpressed and droll, "Were they  _naked_  when they found you?"

And you know, it's moments and days like these during which Loki becomes certain that he's insane or at least  _a lot_  off-kilter, because despite the fact that he's more than shaken up and crying like an infant and so terribly  _horrified_  by the image Tony's put in his head, he starts grinning like a fool and  _cackling_ , delirious and frenzied, at the man's question, and he plasters his hand to his face and just  _weeps_  and laughs and weeps and laughs until Tony's groaning, seemingly shocked, "They  _were_ , weren't they?"

"They were close to it," Loki replies once he's able to stop snickering as wildly as he is. He carefully shifts himself into a more comfortable position, hissing quietly when he disturbs his leg and sends arrows of pain shooting up his thigh, and there's just the slightest bit of strain in his words when he says, "Wait about thirty minutes before you come rushing to my bedside in the emergency room, okay? I have to actually get there and get checked out first."

"Do you really expect me to just  _sit here_  and  _worry_  about you for half an hour?" Tony asks. Loki can practically  _hear_  the disapproving frown on the man's face, and for some reason, that makes him weak, makes him smile and close his eyes like he's pleasantly exhausted and not under both physical and emotional stress of the extraordinarily intolerable kind. Tony does that to him a lot.

"Yes, I do," he chuckles, rubbing the tip of his ring finger against his eyelid. "Promise me that you'll stay put and watch the clock, and that when it's time for you to come see me, you won't drive over the speed limit or rush into the ER like a bat out of hell."

Tony makes this disgruntled, the-things-I-do-for-love sort of noise in response, and after about twenty seconds (which is a long time, let me tell you) of that, he eventually gives Loki a noncommittal, grudging, "I'll try." Loki finds that by some miracle, he can accept  _trying_  when he's got a broken leg and a wounded sense of pride. Yeah.  _Trying_  is okay.

"I love you, Tony," he says, on the verge of murmuring but not quite there yet, just as Thor and Sif stumble into the room, dressed in clothes that are more wrinkled than Loki would honestly like to think about and  _not_  poking out in places they shouldn't be. Thor stops abruptly as soon as he sees that Loki's on the phone, and Loki raises one long, elegant index finger at him, telling him to wait without words.

Tony gives this enormous whirlwind of a sigh, a laugh apparent in his voice when he replies, "I love you too, Loki. I'll come climb into your tower and sweep you off your feet in…" He pauses for a moment. "… twenty-nine minutes."

Loki smiles like the sun when it's a bit too shy to move completely out of the shadow of a cloud, says, "I'll be waiting."

One can only be this gay when they're in love.

Despite that wonderful piece-of-heaven of a phone call, every ounce of sweetness and light in Loki evaporates and gives way to irritation and the closest thing to hatred besides hatred itself when Thor hefts him into his arms again, and nothing but curses and insults and complaints of the nastiest and most petulant caliber leave him as the man carries him out the door and stuffs him into the backseat of his Hummer as carefully as he possibly can. Loki doesn't think he's ever going to forget the way Thor looks at him once he's situated and says, all sullen and puppy-eyed, "I'm sorry," or the way he answers the apology with a sharp, breathy, "Fuck you," or the way Thor laughs at him because he knows he's not entirely serious, or the way he struggles not to laugh himself after his brother's closed the door on him and circled around to the driver's seat.

* * *

After he's gotten through triage, been checked out by a nurse, and received an X-ray, it turns out that Loki  _hasn't_  broken his leg, that he's simply sprained what the doctor tells him is his anterior cruciate ligament – the ligament connecting his knee to his femur, in English. The hospital staff gives him a gown to wear as a replacement for his sopping clothes, and in between visits from the nurses and the doctor, Thor calls Tony (much to his extraordinarily infuriating chagrin) and instructs (not  _asks_ , the asshole) him to bring something for Loki to wear, then Fandral, Volstagg, Hogun, and possibly every single person he can think of to blab about Loki's condition. But that doesn't bother Loki.

What  _bothers_  Loki is the setting. What  _bothers_  Loki is the unnatural, too-bright fluorescent lights that cast everything in a ghostly, clinical glow. What  _bothers_ Loki is the sterile smell of everything, the bleach-white sheets and the eyes of people in pain and the latex gloves and the unique chilliness that only an emergency room is capable of having, too many echoes and too much shine and glare everywhere, and you know what? Loki hasn't been able to go to a hospital without freaking out and breaking down bit by bit on the inside since the accident, because every time he hears a heart monitor, he's imagining it's the one connected to him, and every time he stares at the peculiar, nothing pattern on the ceiling, he can remember spending hours focusing on it and praying that he'd get lost in the tiny blue specks, and the light – Jesus Christ, the  _light_  – the light has his vision swimming like it did the day he was rushed in here nearly four years ago, seventeen and battered half to death, and the light is terrifying and all-encompassing and blinding and constantly on him and a reminder of the mortality of human beings, especially the depressed and unhealthy ones, and the light makes him think of himself and the back of his eyelids and the things he dreams about sometimes, and even though he isn't  _nearly_ as injured as he was after the accident, the light makes him feel like he is.

"You look lost," Thor tells him once he's gotten off of the phone with Steve ( _Steve_ ), and Loki is almost too distracted to notice that the man is speaking to him, to notice that he's hovering at his side and nervously balling his hands in his pockets and watching him like one would a wounded animal they have virtually no ability to help.

Loki looks at Thor without really seeing him, eventually forcing himself to admit, almost as an excuse, "I don't like hospitals." He stares vacantly as Thor pulls one of the flimsy, cheap hospital chairs in the corner of the room up to his bedside and plops down into it, and because Sif retreated to the bathroom after Thor had informed Hogun of their location, Loki and his brother are alone.

Thor makes this uncomfortable sighing noise and props his elbows against his knees so that he can rest his chin in his hands, fixes Loki with eyes that are reminiscent of lonely Golden Retrievers and a raging sea that's been forced to calm. He seems like he's at a total loss for words and far from interested in saying anything until he's blurting, so oddly remorseful, "I'm sorry I forgot about Fenrir."

That stirs Loki to feel something outside of the murky haze of nostalgia and melancholy inside him, something akin to irritation and justification and self-righteousness and bitterness. His voice and gaze are sharper than they were before when he replies, "You should be. The only reason why I ran outside and did this to myself is because you left him in the backyard." He looks away, focuses on the shadows that flit beneath the curtain concealing his room. "You should know better."

"I  _know_ ," Thor groans, and even though he sounds indignant and affronted, he's really just guilty, and Loki knows that. He knows it so much that he has to return his eyes to his brother and _see_  it, see the glumness and the sulkiness and the shame written all over his features, and even though Thor has made a mistake and is  _definitely_  in the wrong here, Loki is rendered completely helpless as he watches his own heart thaw in response to his brother's expression, and he _did_ kind of swear that he wouldn't let him sink into the black hole of self-loathing he's constantly in himself. Plus, it's a bit difficult to stay mad at the man when he looks oh-so  _sad_  for messing up.

But of course, he doesn't express any of that stupid, worthless affection beyond the minute softening of his voice when he says, "You're going to have to help me out a lot more than you have been now."

"I know," Thor echoes. He almost looks bashful when he smirks at Loki, boyish and teasing, and adds, "It'd be a lot easier for me if you didn't try to claw my face off every time I pick you up."

Loki allows himself a small laugh at that. "I'll try to keep that in mind the next time you're raring to take me to the hospital without any clothes on," he counters.

Ironically, it's at the exact moment that Thor pouts at Loki and argues, "I did  _so_  have clothes on!", that a nurse decides to pop into the room, and Thor and Loki are stuck staring at her throughout the five-second lifespan of the awkwardness that has swooped in and perched on their heads like hungry pigeons plucking for crumbs of discomfort and forced association, and Thor looks like he might start to explain his outburst when the nurse holds up a thick roll of elastic and says, "I'm gonna have to bandage your knee, Mr. Skywalker."

Loki just nods silently and disregards Thor's disgruntled huffing beside him, counting himself saved from an unnecessary argument with his brother – his  _brother_  – about what constitutes as naked (and for the record, if it's possible to see your genitalia, Loki considers you to be  _more_  than indecent). That gratitude doesn't last very long, though, because within less than two minutes, he's hissing in pain and clutching at Thor's arm like he only would when they were children, when Thor was only a boy and only his  _older brother_  – not his  _older brother?_  – when Thor was someone he trusted completely to shoulder him through any agony he might find himself in and reassure him with his stupid smiles and awful jokes, but  _honestly_ , that younger, brighter Thor might as well be the Thor Loki's clinging to now when he's got a nurse binding his sprain as tightly as she possibly can without  _killing_  him with a fucking ACE bandage.

And, because today is seriously striving to be one of the most embarrassing Loki will ever experience in his life, Tony arrives in the middle of this painful ideal, finds him nearly spitting in his anguish and holding onto Thor like the man's a lifeboat and he's stranded in the middle of the ocean. Loki locks eyes with his boyfriend just as he's biting back a rather nasty expletive (more for the sake of the nurse than anyone else, because  _really_ , he doesn't give a rat's ass whether or not Thor or Tony hear him curse like a sailor), and this impossibly uncomfortable expression washes over Tony's face the instant he's inside the room, a bundle of clothes in his arms and a pair of sunglasses atop his head.

"H-hey, you," Loki manages to stutter as the nurse fastens his bandage (which feels like it might just cut off the circulation in the lower half of his leg, thank you very much), willing himself to loosen his grip on Thor the slightest bit.

"Hey," Tony replies, unusually quiet and subdued, after he's taken a moment to survey the state Loki's in, and before he can say much more, the nurse is doing her job and informing Loki (and Thor, by extension) on how he should treat his injury for the next two and a half weeks. That's two and a half weeks of not being able to cook, clean, or drive at full capacity without any sort of assistance, and Loki's kind of dreading having to go through them.

"So we can go home now?" Thor asks once the nurse has ended her mini-seminar. The way the man says ' _we_ ' and ' _home_ ' tugs at Loki's heartstrings in way that isn't entirely visible, save for the lowering of his eyes and the infinitesimal, semi-subconscious squeeze he gives Thor's bicep (which he  _still_  hasn't let go of).

"You're free to go," the nurse returns, scooting past Tony and out of the room only a second later. Her exit turns out to be just as awkward as her entrance was, because now, Loki's alone with the two magnetic poles in his life, the two people he cares about the very most, two people who couldn't be more different nor more alike, two people who pretty much  _despise_  each other – and only because they love him.

(And you know, sometimes Loki creeps himself out when he ponders the plethora of similarities Thor and Tony have, because then he starts to think that he probably likes Tony so much because he reminds him of Thor, and  _then_  he starts to think that he's quite possibly in love with his brother, but when he remembers who he is and that Tony is actually very different from Thor and that isolated personality traits have nothing to do with a person as a whole and  _oh my God_ , why would he even  _begin_  to think something like that?, he realizes that he's just crazy and should stop thinking half as much as he does.)

"I need to get dressed," Loki eventually says to break the uncomfortable silence that's fallen over the room. He tells himself to release Thor's arm when it occurs to him how odd it is that he's held onto it for so long and, more importantly, that Tony might get irrationally jealous if he doesn't.

"I'll help," both Thor and Tony pipe at the same time, effortlessly managing to make everything awkward again. It takes every bit of self-control Loki has to not burst with laughter at the  _look_ the two of them share after that awful-wonderful coincidence, a look that's anxious and sheepish and fringed with the tiniest bit of resentment.

"I have clothes for him," Tony announces like saying so will actually mean something to Thor, holding up the bundle he has for emphasis.

"I brought him here," Thor argues. He moves away from where Loki had him trapped so close to his side and crosses his arms over his chest in an attempt to be physically intimidating, and Loki has to force himself not to laugh again, knowing that Thor's size and strength does  _nothing_  to deter Tony when his very  _being_  is a beautifully dangerous combination of determination, rebellion, and self-destruction.

"Well,  _great_ , you did something  _useful_  for once," Tony counters without missing a beat. Loki catches a glimpse of the anger that flashes across Thor's face at that comment and is immediately aware of how fast the window of time he has to fix this situation before it ends in blood is closing –  _especially_  after Tony adds, "Maybe next time he sprains his knee you can try to not get it on with your girlfriend."

"Stop it," Loki interjects, scowling when both Thor and Tony look at him like he's that totally lame mom that won't let her children have any fun (if fighting like dogs is considered to be some sort of  _fun_ , that is). "I can't have you two arguing like this when I need both of you to help me."

" _Both_  of us?" Thor asks incredulously, his voice raising an octave and his expression growing even more outraged than it already is, and  _oh God_ , if Loki could pop him on the back of his head without having his hospital visit prolonged, he would without a second thought.

" _Yes_ , both of you," Loki replies in a tone that leaves no room for debate, fixing Thor and Tony with his sharp jade eyes. "I don't expect you to clean up around the house and take care of dinner and tend to Fenrir and go grocery shopping and drive me to class and make sure I'm alive and breathing all by yourself, Thor." He clasps his legs beneath his right thigh, his gaze lowering along with his volume as he says, "You're not responsible enough."

_Ouch?_

There's a lengthy moment of silence after Loki's spoken, then – "Are you saying that  _he_  is?", and when Loki looks up, he finds Thor pointing at Tony and Tony looking spectacularly displeased, and he's instantly horrified at the predicament he's in, horrified that today has sucked as much as it has and horrified that he's torn between his brother and his boyfriend and horrified that he actually has to answer this godawful, shoot-himself-in-the-foot sort of question that makes him want nothing more than to fling himself off the edge of a cliff and into an ocean of beautiful blue death, but it's not like he has  _nearly_  enough time as he wants to ponder the incredible weariness that's made his chest its home, because Thor is waiting for an answer and Tony probably is, too, even if he doesn't look like it.

"I'm  _saying_  that I need more help than you alone can give me," Loki hedges, his usually irascible and avoidant self. He's practically glaring at Thor when he adds, "Don't assume that I'm making a comparison when you have no reason to."

(FYI: Thor  _does_  have a reason to – one that I'm sure is pretty clear when Loki  _himself_  has a plethora of them to go around – but Loki can't have his brother discovering his ulterior motives and outsmarting him and generally being a pain in the ass, now can he?)

Before anyone can say anything to contradict him, Loki throws a hand out towards Tony and orders him to, "Help me to the bathroom, will you?"

Tony doesn't have to be told twice, and in seconds, he's balancing the clothes he's brought over his shoulder, slipping his arms beneath Loki's thighs and around his back, and lifting him off the bed and into his embrace, and even though it's altogether too much like a bride-groom setup and Loki would much rather limp – to get a feel for how he'll be faring for the next three weeks more than because he's a masochist who has a knack for getting others to pity him because he's in pain and then refuse their assistance due to a supposedly inflated ego,  _gasp_  – he doesn't have it in him to complain when he can  _smell_  Tony, smell that familiar, ridiculously arousing combination of Axe, motor oil, and tobacco, and it's simply too easy for him to relax in his boyfriend's hold and fasten his arms around his neck without a word of protest – that is, until he sees the look of utter betrayal on Thor's face.

And suddenly, Loki's having one of those moments he so often experiences in his mind, a moment of clarity and realization and self-hatred so bitter it keeps him awake for hours at night. He's realizing how two-faced he must look (how two-faced he  _is_ ) to Thor by being nothing but antagonistic when he's in his arms and tantamount to a blushing schoolgirl in Tony's, by acting like receiving Thor's help is worse than  _dying_  while getting Tony's is so much more preferred that he'd actually  _reach_ forit. He's realizing that he's not the only person that has the ability to be envious, that Thor is probably  _just_  as jealous, if not more so, of Tony as Loki is of Sif, Fandral, Volstagg, Hogun, Steve, Clint, Emma –

Okay, forget the  _more so_. Thor is jealous. He might not be the green-eyed monster Loki is (Oh,  _look!_ I made a joke!), but he's jealous. And he's the kicked-puppy kind of hurt that is the absolute  _worst_  to behold. And this is something that Loki's going to have to deal with and/or address sometime soon while simultaneously making it clear to Tony that he's still one-hundred and ten percent loyal to him if he wants to have a somewhat peaceful recovery. And he's once again the not-so-proud recipient of the Asshole of the Year Award.  _Wonderful_.

Loki doesn't give Thor much more than a sympathetic, near-apologetic (as close to apologetic as  _he_  can get) glance, though, because despite how beneficial to the  _world_  it would be for them to hash all this out as soon as possible, he  _really_  wants to get dressed and Tony's already carrying him to the bathroom and  _oh yeah_ , he's going to be alone with his boyfriend for a few minutes, and that's actually pretty damn  _awesome_.

(Plus, he's  _still_  a bastard. Let's not forget that.)

Once Tony's kicked the bathroom door closed and sat Loki down on the uncomfortably sterile toilet (and for a second, I want all of you to focus on how weird and totally unsexy the word ' _toilet_ 'is), the man is kissing him hard on the lips, pushing him against the back of his seat and instantly making apparent three things –  _one_ , that he's missed Loki since the last time he saw him, which was quite honestly only two days ago;  _two_ , that he  _wants_  Loki (a desire that's entirely mutual, by the way); and  _three_ , that he's some degree of  _pissed off_ , and I say this because Tony only kisses like he's bullying you when he's angry about something, and Loki  _knows_  that, and that's why he's letting Tony suck the breath out of him and press his thumbs into the soft, faintly depressed area beneath his ribs, letting him handle him as roughly as he wants to until his knee starts to suffer and gravity threatens to send the bundle of clothes on Tony's shoulder falling to the floor. That's when he pushes Tony away from him, their lips pulling apart with a wet, sucking noise and the air between them rapidly cooling now that there's nothing occupying it. Tony looks confused.

"You were being really rude back there," is what Loki decides to break the ice with, his tone breathless and terse. He doesn't feel the slightest bit remorseful when Tony's perplexed expression morphs into something irritated and just a little wounded in response.

"What did you  _expect_  me to be?" the man retorts, squatting between Loki's legs and dropping a possessive hand on his uninjured knee. "Thor was supposed to take care of you and he let you nearly break your leg.  _Of course_  I was rude."

"First of all,  _no one_  is obligated to take care of me," Loki argues, sitting up straight and looking directly at Tony with the hint of a grimace playing on his lips. "I can take care of myself."

Tony raises an eyebrow, nods to Loki's sprain, and snorts, "I can see that." Loki nearly slaps him for that.

" _Second of all_ ," he goes on, opting to ignore Tony's remark, "Thor was already…" He pauses at the memory, his lips puckering for a half-second. "… with Sif by the time I got home, and it was raining pretty hard outside when I fell, so even  _if_  he wasn't doing what he was doing, it would have been difficult for him to hear me screaming."

"But  _still_ ," Tony persists, his voice turning into a low, almost desperate whine. He moves his hand up to bracket Loki's hip, to pinch the fabric there, and says, "If  _I_ was there, I wouldn't have let any of this happen at all."

"I don't think you could have stopped it, love, even if you wanted to," Loki replies with a slightly affectionate, vaguely exasperated sigh. "And you  _aren't_  Thor. It's not your responsibility to be him, nor is it to protect me."

Tony grumbles quietly, much like he did on the phone earlier, scooting closer to Loki, wrapping his arms around his middle, and pulling him forward so that he can rest his head against his stomach. "I  _want_  to protect you, though," he murmurs, his nose poking into Loki's abdomen and his words halfway lost in his hospital gown. "You get in enough trouble as it is."

Loki frowns a bit, bringing a hand up to slip his fingers into Tony's hair and worrying the inside of his mouth. Everything about this – Tony's position and how softly he's speaking and that they're in a bathroom and their environment is tinged with sickness – it all reminds him of when Tony was in withdrawal, and that makes his stomach turn with anxiety and his heart clench with fear despite the fact that he  _knows_  Tony's life isn't on the line at this very moment, that he's pretty damn certain there isn't anything seriously going wrong with the man right now. He doesn't air his thoughts, however, choosing instead to respond to Tony's comment with, "I  _am_  a magnet for misfortune. You know that."

"I know," Tony exhales, defeated. He tightens his hold on Loki, but he doesn't say anything more – a bad sign when he's probably the most loquacious, wordy person on the face of the Earth.

"What's the matter, sweetheart?" Loki asks, his minute frown turning into full-blown scowl in his worry. Tony raises his head to look at him with his stupidly round, stupidly adorable eyes as he moves his fingers to the nape of the man's neck and rubs them in the dip there, watching how Tony's eyes lid just a bit and his lips part to let out a tiny sigh of pleasure at his ministrations. The sight of that is almost enough to dispel every negative working its way through his bloodstream, if only because he's calmed his boyfriend in some small way.

"I'm just pissed off that you're hurt," Tony says, thumbs brushing absently against Loki's sides. "And that I'm not allowed to protect you anymore, or whatever."

"Tony, you're  _allowed_  to protect me," Loki practically growls, suddenly all worked up and belligerent once more. "I just don't want you to feel like you  _need_  to, and especially not from my own brother."

"Too late," is Tony's bitter, laughing reply, uttered as the man stretches upwards to feather his lips against Loki's chin. "I'm always gonna feel that way about you."

Those last two words do dangerous things to Loki's heartbeat, things that have him reminding himself that his life is in fact  _not_  a Hallmark movie and that he doesn't deserve one ounce of the devotion Tony bestows upon him, no matter how much the man insists otherwise. Allow him to be an ass and slowly shut the softer parts of himself down for about an hour or so, because _honestly_ , even though he's definitely come to terms with his feelings for Tony, he's  _still_  not entirely comfortable with being the gunk-on-the-inside-of-a-jelly-donut sort of gooey that his boyfriend makes him subconsciously want to be. ( _ **And**_  he's a bitch.)

"You're ridiculous, Tony," Loki huffs, giving said man a proper kiss on the lips as he starts to pull at the strings of his gown. This look of absolute adoration and lust comes over Tony as soon as Loki's peeled the flimsy fabric off of his lean frame, but Loki doesn't address it with much more than a playful smirk, a brief nuzzle to the nose, and another quick, insubstantial peck of a kiss.

"I love you a whole fucking lot, you tease," Tony chuckles, watching as Loki snatches the clothes he brought off of his shoulder and takes a few seconds to examine them.

" _D'aw_ , I love you, too," Loki replies, only a bit histrionic (as per usual). He slips his arms into the sleeves of the Def Leppard t-shirt Tony's chosen for him, and once the article's on him, he doesn't stop himself from grasping the hem of the top and pressing it to his nose to inhale the extraordinarily Tony-esque scent of it. He feels like he's won something grand when he sees the way this impossibly pleased grin blooms across Tony's face in response to his somewhat childish action.

"You're perfect," Tony nearly  _purrs_ , moving to kiss his way up Loki's jaw and suck at the spot below his ear just like he's learned to do when he wants to drive the man crazy.

"I know, love," Loki breathes, tone dripping with sarcasm and thinly-concealed desire. He gives Tony's chest a halfhearted little push, gym shorts fisted in his hand, and says, "Help me get these on."

Tony flashes Loki a grin lascivious enough to make him forget everything he's ever been taught concerning public decency and sexual morals, and  _dear_ _ **God**_ , he's actually thinking about _having sex_  with Tony in a  _hospital bathroom_ , and everything in the world is suddenly revolving around his boyfriend's dark, wanting eyes and the hand he has wrapped around his hip, and they've only been dating for less than a  _week_  but it's all they can do to not lock themselves up in either one of their bedrooms and not come out until at least three sunrises later nowadays, and  _oh_ _ **shit**_  – that's right, he has a sprained knee and it fucking  _hurts_  when someone's trying to pull clothing over it, and  _yes_ , that would be him gasping curses, now.

" _Fuck_ , Tony…!" he hisses, his hand flying up to grasp at the counter beside the toilet and  _squeeze_. Tony's watching him carefully even as he tugs the waistband of his shorts over his hips, and after Loki's fully clothed and panting with exertion, the man pulls him into his embrace again and peppers kisses along the crest of his cheek as if he's on the verge of slipping away from him like character X does in that too-familiar scene from every single fantasy/sci-fi/romance movie you've ever seen in your life, and he's murmuring, "I'm sorry," against his temple like he's actually done something wrong, and  _dammit_  – that's just  _heartbreaking_ ,  _ **especially**_  when it's second nature for Tony to assume such things about himself.

(Needless to say, all that sexual tension from earlier is  _gone_ , don't you think?)

Loki responds to Tony's affection with affection in turn, winds his arms around his neck and presses his mouth against the hard line of his jaw and says, more like it's an imperative than a question, "You're staying with me for the next two weeks, okay?"

Tony leans back an inch or two to give him a slightly imploring gaze, to ask, "What about Thor?"

Loki shakes his head before Tony can even get all three words out, moving his hands to frame the man's face and touching their noses together as he replies, "Let  _me_  worry about that. Just try to behave, okay?"

"Me?  _Behave?_ " Tony chuckles. His words trail off into a pleased hum when Loki catches his lips in a firm, bittersweet kiss, and even though he hasn't said  _yes_  or agreed to act like a civil human being, Loki has a feeling that the man will at least make an attempt at decorum.

* * *

The rest of that first day – the first of what,  _eighteen?_  – is just as hectic as you'd expect it to be. Loki rides home with Tony and Thor and Sif grumble and curse along behind him (that's what he imagines them doing, anyway), and as soon as they're all lodged in his living room (which seems a lot smaller now that it's full of people that have varying degrees of hate for one another), it's like everybody in the whole  _world_  has lost the ability to decide what it is they should do next and eye contact is something that's impossible to make. Let's take a moment to call roll, shall we?

There's Tony, who is honestly the most composed/casual/not-totally-flipping-a-minor-shit person in the room right now. He's doing a spectacular job of not looking at anyone but Loki and making sure said man is as comfortable as he can possibly be, sprawled on his sofa and with a super-shiny, brand new injury. A-plus for Mr. Stark's good behavior.

There's Sif, who easily looks more anxious than anyone else and is failing to not stare at Tony like he's emerged from the depths of her strangest and scariest dreams, which is understandable when you consider the fact that the last time she saw him, he was missing a shirt and had his head between Loki's thighs. She's standing about a foot from the front door, arms folded over her chest and a hand clasped to her mouth as if she might say something unsavory if she doesn't physically prevent herself from doing so. Let's give her a B.

There's Thor, who is just as huge and blond and pissy as he was at the hospital. He keeps casting these semi-inconspicuous, not exactly accidental, altogether  _too_  victimized glances in a direction that could pass for Loki's but really isn't if you're paying close attention, and you can clearly see the disdain for everything that's ever existed written all over his face – something that's scarily and unsettlingly similar to the expression that's plastered across Loki's features ninety-nine percent of the time (that extra one percent accounts for occasions when Loki is with Tony or Frigga or – very rarely –  _absolutely no one!_ ). Thor gets a C-minus.

Then there's Loki, who – as the most incapacitated as well as the most mature individual in the room – is obligated to take control of this clusterfuck of a situation, and honestly, as wonderful as that should sound to a person who has gone most of his life having the very  _opposite_  of control over anything and everything, Loki is kind of  _terrified_  at the thought of having to direct anyone but Tony, he has no idea how to be any kind of authoritative without also being bitchy and/or confrontational, and today is  _seriously_  a shit day.  _Radical_.

"Well, then. I suppose now's a good a time as ever for you guys to get to work," Loki breaks the awkward silence with, somehow managing to make himself look dominant by simply sitting up straight and crossing his arms. Everybody  _definitely_  looks at him then, and  _whoa_ , that'd be a lot more mortifying if he wasn't letting out a consistent, even stream of words at the exact moment those six eyes landed on him.

"Sif doesn't have to do anything, does she?" Thor asks a bit gruffly, a hint of worry fringing his words. Sif's eyes, hard and somewhat unreadable for the most part, flick between Thor and Loki after her boyfriend's (this is a term that's  _still_  under debate, really) voiced that question, and Loki can't tell if she's hopeful or embarrassed or both.

That doesn't really matter, though, because despite what  _anyone_  wants, Loki's answer is pretty much set in stone. "If she doesn't help, she can leave," he replies without a moment's hesitation, and when Thor, Sif, and Tony's demeanors all melt into unusual combinations of fear, surprise, and something like submission, Loki quickly realizes that he has absolutely no reason to be afraid of taking on a position of authority – not when he gets reactions as  _beautiful_  as those, and only by being  _honest_.

"I'll help," Sif offers almost offhandedly, finally tearing her hand away from her mouth and standing up just a bit straighter. Thor looks at her like she's just lost her mind or sold her soul to the Devil, and that's kind of hilarious and sad, seeing as  _Loki_  is the one she just offered herself to.

Loki carefully chooses to ignore that ugly little implication (that probably exists more in his head than anywhere else, honestly), and he gives Sif this smile that's spectacularly both grateful and aloof (such things are only possible when you're an asshole, let me tell you) and says, "I appreciate it."

Sif's attitude takes on an oddly appeased air as Tony asks, seemingly impatient, "What do you need us to do?"

Loki doesn't have to be questioned twice.

"First of all, someone needs to help me bathe Fenrir," he starts, his eyes automatically finding Thor's without him consciously meaning them to. "Someone else needs to mop the kitchen floor, and one of you needs to somehow make dinner happen." Loki pauses to catch his breath. "I'm also going to need help going to bed later tonight and waking up and getting to class tomorrow morning, not to mention going places in general for the next two weeks–"

"Can we make a chore chart and put it up on the fridge or something?" Thor cuts in, and while Loki's first instinct is to get angry at his brother for interrupting him, the man's idea strikes him as an extraordinarily good one when he remembers exactly  _who_  he has aiding him.

"If that makes you feel better, sure," he returns. Thor's previously severe expression softens a bit, thank  _God_.

"I can help you give Fenrir a bath," Tony offers, immediately and unintentionally succeeding at stressing Loki out again for reasons that will become apparent in just a second.

"I was actually hoping Thor could do that," Loki concedes this side of awkwardly, watching as his brother and boyfriend exchange the most irritated glance in the history of the  _universe_  for the  _gazillionth_  fucking time today. He's practically throwing himself under a bus when he adds, "Because he left him outside, and all that."

Thor gives Loki a glare of epic and hilarious proportions as Tony half-sighs, "I guess I'll take care of dinner, then. It'll give me a chance to grab some stuff from my house." He raises a hand to adjust his sunglasses and scratch at his temple (that damn telltale habit of his), asks, "Is there anything in particular you want?"

Loki smiles a bit despite himself (because good  _Lord_ , is it wonderful to have an opinion that matters once every few hundred years), replies, "Maybe Italian?"

He knows he's only being coy and cutesy because Tony's looking at him like he's the world. He also knows that Thor (and possibly Sif) would probably much rather be anywhere but  _here_ , watching him and Tony casually flirt with one another like high school students. He  _also_  knows that his give-a-fuck is definitely broken at the moment, and all because Tony Stark has the ability to be the biggest fucking  _sweetheart_  when they're together.

"Can do," Tony pipes with the faintest of grins, moving to drop a quick kiss on Loki's temple before he scoots on past Sif and out the door like the avenging angel he is. What a hero.

"I'll, uhm, go clean the kitchen," Sif interjects once Tony's out of sight, like a divine blessing in the way she saves things from becoming uncomfortable  _yet again_.

"And I'll go get Fenrir," Thor puts in immediately after Sif's spoken, and it's almost painfully obvious how eager he is to get moving (and who could blame him after the clusterfuck that is/was today?). He and Sif are halfway to blowing the house down (or something else similarly dramatic) when Loki speaks up again, voice the slightest bit louder than usual and just as authoritative as it was prior to when Tony turned him into a pile of goop.

"Get me into the bathroom first," he orders, the words coming out of him in a rush in his haste to catch Thor and Sif before they're totally out of earshot. Loki has to force himself not to start cackling like a witch when the two of them nearly trip over themselves as well as each other trying to change directions.

"Yeah, good idea," Thor mumbles half to himself as he shuffles over to the sofa, arms outstretched and ready to make Loki airborne once more. Loki makes sure not to act like  _too_  much of an ass once he's up in the air (a feat that can only be considered  _phenomenal_  when you consider things like his dreadful personality and the fact that he's still far from being okay with his brother taking care of him after he's spent an eternity neglecting to do so).

"The mop's in the laundry room!" Loki calls to Sif, almost as an afterthought, on his way down the hallway, tantamount to a helpless ragdoll in his brother's hold. He doesn't have time to see if he's heard him.

Five minutes later and Loki is perched on the toilet (his favorite place to be today, it seems) like some pampered fairy tale prince and Thor, covered in mud and obviously disgruntled, is following his instructions on how to wash the dog-tired (no pun intended) husky in the bathtub beside him. No words are exchanged between them save for Loki's occasional directive – ' _You have to_ splash _the water on him, Thor._ ', ' _Start from the top and work down._ ', ' _Don't get shampoo in his eyes – use a towel for his face._ ' – and it isn't until Thor is carefully rinsing Fenrir's pelt that Loki utters something that isn't an imperative.

"You're quiet, brother," he notes, only pinning that pronoun to the end of his sentence because he knows what it'll do to Thor, and that's  _open him up_  and  _get him talking_  (and who would've thought that this is something Loki'd ever  _strive_  for?).

"I'm bathing your dog," Thor returns in an unusually even tone, not moving to meet Loki's eyes like Loki expected him to.

And suddenly, they're children again, and Loki wants Thor's attention so much it's  _killing_ him inside, except he's much too proud to pull for it as straightforwardly as he probably should, and Thor is just rebuffing him so fucking  _casually_ , and that's really damn  _hurtful_ , and Loki's small and trivial and customarily in the wrong like he always is, and he's the true definition of what it is to be a little brother and the youngest in a family, and that makes him start to feel just a little argumentative, and self-control is great and all that but impulsive behavior is so much easier to engage in when you're emotionally wounded, and  _fuck_ equality and trying not to be an absolute douchebag for no good reason – Loki has an  _excuse_  to be a bitch, and he'll be  _damned_  if he doesn't use it.

"I thought we talked about how you're to act around Tony," Loki says, abrupt and without pretense and totally uncalled for, because he's never learned how to gain what he wants by being anything but underhanded and malicious, because underhanded and malicious are the only way he's going to get Thor to pay him any mind, and because  _hey_  – Thor  _did_  fuck up, and it's  _so_ refreshing to point out his brother's mistakes when he's spent his whole childhood watching as they were brushed off as simple accidents while every error  _he's_  ever made has been equivalent to the Book of Revelations in its awful awfulness.

"Well, it's kind of hard to be A-okay with watching you turn into a princess around him," Thor growls back. He  _still_ isn't looking at Loki, and  _really_ , I wouldn't be lying if I said that Loki is ready to chuck something at his brother's fucking head because of it.

"A  _princess?_ " Loki snaps – ah,  _yes_ , there are Thor's clear, glowering blue eyes coming to regard him – "The last time I checked, Tony was my  _boyfriend_  and I was allowed to act however the hell I wanted to around him."

"The last time  _I_ checked, I was your  _brother_ ," Thor retorts, turning completely away from Fenrir to look at Loki directly. "Why is it so wrong for me to try and help you, but as soon as  _Tony's_ around, it's like he's God's gift to you?"

Three things about what just came out of Thor's mouth:

1\. Thor made a pretty bad decision by saying  _God_  and using the term ' _God's gift_ ', because no matter how loosely Loki throws around the statements ' _Oh my God_ ' and ' _I swear to God_ ', always remember the fact that those words are in vain and that any advice/plea/idea with religious connotations that gets thrown his way is automatically invalid to him. Of course, Thor isn't aware of Loki's lack of belief, but that doesn't change the fact that his mention of  _God_  gets under Loki's skin.

2\. Thor is making the assumption that Loki's totally fucking  _fine_  with Tony helping him – one that isn't true, as evidenced by the mini-argument the two of them had at the hospital, and one that's a crock of shit when you think about how prideful Loki actually is, never mind the fact that Tony's  _everything_ has the awesome and horrifying ability to tear into him and leave him cripplingly vulnerable. This brings me to my third point:

3\. After over two months of living with Loki and sort of-kind of learning about who he is and what his life has been like since the accident drove a wedge wider than the Grand Canyon between them, Thor is  _still_  being impossibly ignorant about the nature of Loki and Tony's relationship. Now, you can honestly say that this is understandable when Loki used to go to great lengths to keep Thor and Tony from ever confronting one another (for reasons that are obvious in light of what happened on Tony's birthday and what's going on at this very moment) and when Loki isn't exactly the most open person, but when people like  _Steve Rogers_  – who isn't even  _involved_ in any of this – know that Loki has Tony wrapped around his little finger and vice-versa, when Tony knows things about Loki that Thor couldn't even  _dream_  to be aware of, when the only person outside of their family that Loki mentions in casual conversation is  _that's right_ ,  _ **Tony Stark**_ , you'd think that Thor would get the hint that  _oh_ , he  _isn't_  the morning and the evening star in the sky that is Loki's life anymore – that's  _Tony_. Anyways.

"Please stop throwing that word around like it means something," Loki blurts. It's only when that stab has escaped him that he realizes how dreadful and hypocritical it is, but he can't even _begin_ to take it back, and Thor's giving him this terribly confused, terribly  _hurt_  look, and oh  _yeah_ , he's a monster. There's no denying it now – he is truly demonic.

"What word?" Thor asks, the tail ends of irritation and the very beginnings of actual rage fringing his question. "' _Brother_ '? You think that doesn't  _mean_ anything?"

At first, Loki just blanks out. He doesn't have a clue how he's going to respond to a question so  _baring_ , so  _confrontational_ , so  _deep_ , and that oh-so familiar sensation called shame is turning the inside of his ribcage uncomfortably warm, and he's pretty sure his expression is horribly conflicted and the perfect picture of a deer in headlights, and  _damn_ , today's the day Thor's going to get fed up with his bullshit and leave him again, and he's gone too far and it's too late to fix things, and he and Thor aren't  _ever_  going to be like they were before the accident and it's  _all his_ _ **fault**_  –

But then a thought hits him. A long thought. An intricate thought. An  _honest_  thought. And Loki doesn't think he's ever found words as perfect as the ones he's just formulated in his head to describe something as complicated and interesting as he and Thor, and they couldn't have come at a more opportune time, and  _yes_  – he  _needs_ Thor to understand him. If they're ever going to put a halt to this nonstop arguing, he  _ **needs**_  Thor to  _understand_  him.

Loki closes his eyes for a moment, trying to ground himself so that he can say what he needs to without totally flipping out or something (and knowing him, he  _will_  if he doesn't at least _attempt_  to reach some sort of forced Zen). When he looks at Thor again, the man is  _still_  glaring daggers at him, and it's nothing short of a  _miracle_  that he can make words come out of him, that he can say, slowly and carefully, "I'm going to explain something to you, and I want you to  _listen_  to me and try and understand what I'm saying, okay?"

"Stop acting like I'm stupid!" Thor thunders, ever the king of assumptions and suddenly three times as pissed off as he was only seconds earlier. Loki can't help but jump in surprise at his brother's sudden outburst, can't help but gasp a bit when Thor slams his hand against the inside of the bathtub, sending drops of water flying, and growls, "You always talk to me like I'm some kind of fucking idiot and like you're so much smarter than me!"

Loki squeezes his eyes shut again like a turtle retreating into its shell or a hedgehog curling into a ball, inhaling a deep, shuddering breath and telling himself that Thor is just being loud to intimidate him (like he  _always_  has) before he's looking into the man's face and saying, "I'm not insinuating that you're not intelligent,  _Thor_. I'm trying to get you to calm down and listen to what I'm telling you, because I  _knew_  you'd get angry, and when you're angry,  _you don't_ _ **hear**_ _anything_."

"You do the same thing, Loki!" Thor argues, his face smeared with indignation and distress. "It doesn't matter  _what_  I say – you  _always_  get upset for some reason, and then you shut me out!"

That's when Loki realizes – for the first time in his life – that he and Thor are actually the same person. You know how people say that Venus and Earth are twin planets – extraordinarily similar in the most basic and fundamental of ways and yet terribly different on the surface? That's how Loki is seeing himself and his brother at the moment, and it's kind of scaring the fuck out of him.

He doesn't have much time to dwell on that controversial and potentially life-changing epiphany for very long, though, because here comes impatience and aggravation and self-loathing plowing through his bloodstream and pushing words between his lips, forcing him to practically  _scream_ , " _Yes_ , I do the same thing! That's all the more reason for you to act differently!" Loki's mouth is left hanging open even after he's punctuated that exclamation, as he catches his breath just enough to add, "I'm a  _monster_. You don't want to be like me."

The look on Thor's face is nothing short of stunned – a reaction that makes perfect sense when you think about the fact that the man has gone most of his life being unaware or simply ignorant of his brother's eternal hatred of himself, hatred that Loki's had and nurtured since he was old enough to put together that the reason why everybody treated him like shit was probably his dreadful personality. Of course, if that's the case, Thor has most likely believed that his brother is a misanthropic, arrogant, vindictive  _asshole_  for the longest, and while Loki certainly  _is_  all that (with the possible exception of  _arrogant_ , which we can easily correct to be  _selfish_  or  _narcissistic_  – words that mean  _very_ different things when you define them honestly), the fact that he despises his own  _existence_  changes (as well as explains) a whole fucking lot. Thor is going to spend the next few months realizing and processing all of this, but for now, that leviathan of a concept is but a seed of doubt planting itself in his head, asking him if he truly knows the person who's been a cornerstone in his life since the day he was born, fuzzy-headed and chameleon-eyed.

(Hint: He doesn't.)

Fenrir starts to whimper quietly when Loki decides to break the silence Thor is failing to fill in his shock, when Loki says, his voice even but cracking, "' _Brother_ ' does mean something, Thor. It does. But not what you keep  _saying_  it does."

Thor winces a bit, visibly deflating. There are flares of emotion in his eyes, but his mouth is sealed firmly shut – an invitation for Loki to keep going.

"We've known each other for our entire lives," Loki continues, carefully following his own train of thought. "We grew up together. We've laughed together and we've cried together. We've seen each other at our best and our worst, and you know  _me_  better than most other people do, and I know  _you_  better than most other people do, too. Once upon a time we were best friends, but we've also been the worst of enemies." He swallows thickly, inhales a shallow breath and looks Thor straight in the face. " _That's_  what ' _brother_ ' means. ' _Brother_ ' means that nothing's ever going to erase or invalidate anything we've ever been through together, and I say that with both the good and the bad we've endured in mind.  _ **That's**_  what ' _brother_ ' means."

Thor's expression gradually softens into something like weary acceptance and grateful nostalgia throughout the entirety of Loki's seminar, and by the time Loki has paused, he actually seems somewhat pleased with what came out of the man's mouth. All that satisfaction is dashed away almost hilariously fast when Loki speaks again, though.

"' _Brother_ ' doesn't mean I trust you," he says, plain and almost bitterly honest. Loki lets a few lengthy moments of wordlessness follow that bombshell, lets his words sink in and turn Thor's face into a mask of surprise and hurt once more. Can I get an  _ouch?_

"That's what  _trust_  means, and you'd think that's why it's called  _trust_  and not  _brotherhood_  or  _family_  or whatever the hell else you want to equate it to," Loki picks up right where he left off with, not one beat missed. He angles his head towards Thor as he asks, voice an octave higher, "You want to talk about me  _trusting_  you? Start by accomplishing the simple task of bringing _my fucking_ _ **dog**_  back in the house when it's raining so I don't break my  _goddamn_  leg trying to go get him.

"' _Brother_ ' doesn't mean I'm comfortable with letting you in, either," Loki goes on. "If you want me to be alright with you helping me, try doing it more often, and  _not_  just when I'm broken or sobbing or about to have a nervous breakdown. Don't expect me to let you be my best friend after you've been absent from my life for two whole years.

"' _Brother_ ' doesn't mean trust or comfort. Those are things I have with Tony –  _not_  with you. Not yet."

Thor's eyes brighten the slightest bit at that ' _yet_ '.

"Now, I am  _trying_ , Thor. I really am. I've made a lot of allowances for you, and I know it doesn't seem like it, but if I didn't? You'd be out of here and our relationship would be as good as gone." Loki gives a sad little smile, nearly chuckling when he says, "You don't know how monstrous I am. You don't know how much I could  _hate_  you, how easy it would be for me to let myself loathe you with every cell in my body." He puts an accusatory index finger to his chest. "You think I'm a bitch? Give me a reason to give up on you and I'll be ten times worse in a heartbeat."

(I want to take this moment to point out the fact that Loki has been given  _many_  reasons to stop trying to work with Thor over the past two months. The Curious Case of the Foodless Kitchen? Perfect example. Oh, and do you remember what happened at Steve's party? Even  _better_. Also, let's not forget the absolute  _disaster_  that was Tony's birthday. That should have had Thor out of the house in a hot minute – but it  _didn't_. Think about that.)

Thor lowers his gaze then, the corners of his mouth pulling down in a small, almost weary frown. An unusual surge of pity hits Loki at the sight of his brother so disheartened, but he isn't quite done yet, and  _pity_  is an emotion that isn't really known for its ability to sway or temper him.

"' _Brother_ ' doesn't mean that I'm not still me, and  _brother_  doesn't mean that you're not still you, okay?" Loki asks, the question rhetorical and his eyes softer, more open. When Thor looks up at him again, almost curious, he says, "Remember that the next time you say that word and expect me to turn into a Care Bear, because I  _promise_  you – I'm the worst person you'll ever meet, and being your  _brother_  doesn't change that one bit."

A peculiar look comes over Thor when Loki says that, one that has his brow wrinkling and his eyes taking on a curious quality. He starts to shake his head – slowly at first, then with more certainty after he's realized that he's doing it and that he  _means_ it, and then he's saying, "I don't think so."

Loki blinks, asks, "You don't think  _what_  so?"

"That you're the worst person I'll ever meet," Thor answers. A smirk tugs at his lips. "I think Janet Van Dyne beats you out of that ballpark."

Loki can't stop himself from snorting a laugh at that, his hand flying up to cover his mouth and his eyes crinkling at the corners. "And who's the second-worst?" he questions, half-expecting to hear his own name in reply.

"Emma," Thor concedes after a moment of thought, and when Loki raises an inquisitive brow at him, he elaborates, "She's a bitch."

"You hang out with her," Loki points out, watching as Thor gets to his feet to lift Fenrir out of the bathtub and reaching for a clean towel.

"That doesn't mean she isn't a bitch," Thor counters, guiding Fenrir to sit between Loki's legs so that the man can dry him off. "I kind of  _have_  to be around her when she's a cheerleader."

"You don't have to hang out with anyone you don't want to," Loki says almost absently, sounding very Frigga-esque to his own ears, his attention halved between his brother and his dog. He carefully rubs Fenrir down with his towel, craning his neck to press an affectionate kiss to the husky's head or nose every so often.

"Easy for you to say," Thor mumbles thoughtlessly. It takes a few seconds of too-vigorous scrubbing for Loki to shove the implications of that comment (like  _Why would anyone even want to come near someone as dreadful as him?_  or  _He doesn't even know what it's like to be wanted_ ) aside.

"But, no," Thor goes on in a stronger, louder tone, drawing Loki's eyes his way. "I think being brothers changes us, in a way." He smiles a stupidly bright, stupidly sweet, stupidly  _Thor_  smile. "And I don't think you're awful at all."

Loki wonders for the umpteenth time how Thor could be so gullible, how love could make a person so foolish and blind. That's a mystery he doesn't think he'll  _ever_  solve, or at least not any time soon.

* * *

After Fenrir's been dried and he's been escorted out of the bathroom, Loki makes himself busy by calling the library to inform Charles of his injury (the resulting conversation gets him out of a month of work, thank  _God_ ) and acquiescing to Thor's request by drawing up a heavily lopsided chore chart (and by  _lopsided_ , I mean that Thor and Tony have been designated with the bulk of the work and everybody else will just clean up after them). Then, he curls up with Fenrir on the couch and takes a much-needed nap while Thor and Sif play  _Mass Effect_  at an unusually (as well as fortunately) acceptable volume.

When he wakes, Fenrir is gone and there are kisses raining on his temple. His mouth curls into a tiny, half-hiding smile before he can get a chance to put a leash on his behavior/emotions/demeanor, and, without thinking, he reaches out to fist his hand against what definitely feels like a chest. A solid, warm chest that probably (and most definitely  _should_ ) belongs to Tony.  _Mmm_.

"You awake, turtledove?" Tony chuckles, his breath feathering over the shell of Loki's ear, and Loki can't stop himself from flinching at the feel of that, from jerking away from the invisible spiders his boyfriend is blowing onto his skin. When he finally happens to pry his eyes open, he finds Tony hovering over him with love and amusement smeared across his face in equal and beautiful amounts, and he doesn't think twice before he's smiling again – more openly this time – helpless to the lack of control that usually accompanies sleepiness and Tony's presence.

"I am now," Loki murmurs, pulling his hand away from his boyfriend so that he can stretch and fold his arms over his head. Halfway through that flex, Tony catches his lips in a proper kiss – a humming, sweet, absolutely  _breathtaking_  kiss – and it's all he can do to not just melt into the sofa and devolve into a primitive, blubbering mess of a person. Tony has a thing about doing that to him, a thing that nearly borders on fetishism if Loki knows anything about the man.

"I come bearing gifts," Tony announces once he's pulled away enough to speak (but not so far that they aren't sharing oxygen anymore). It's then when Loki notices the crutches that are tucked under his arm, and his expression swiftly mutates into something perplexed and curious at the sight.

"Where the hell did you get a pair of crutches?" he asks, pushing himself up into a sitting position and bumping noses with Tony as he goes. "And what time is it?"

"Technically, they belong to a local theatre troupe, but I have a friend who's letting me have them for an indefinite period of time. And it's a little after seven-thirty," Tony replies with one of his characteristically triumphant,  _Colossus of Rhodes_  sort of smirks. Instead of rearing back to look at Loki directly, he lets his chin rest against the man's chest, grins when Loki snorts at his eccentricity.

"Thank you," Loki manages after a moment, only a little delayed, moving a hand to thread his fingers through Tony's hair, rub the tips of them into his scalp. He's still learning how to express gratitude around his boyfriend,  _still_  trying to figure out how to be thankful without being mushy or vulnerable (all three things usually end up being one and the same in his mind).

And really, this whole week has been an educational one for Loki. Between learning how to be Tony's boyfriend – a feat that requires him to be in love and sexy and sweet and responsible and patient and dependent and honest – and figuring out how to be Thor's brother – which means he should be open to suggestions and easier to communicate with and not such a bitch and _again_ , responsible and  _again_ , patient and  _yet_ _ **again**_ , honest – and  _still_  managing to keep a hold on his identity, he feels like he's been the student in a nonstop class on modifying his own behavior. That's pretty unnerving, to be honest.

Despite all this, Tony doesn't seem to notice his apprehension, and he leans up to nuzzle at Loki's nose, briefly biting at his bottom lip ( _shit_ , there goes the temperature, flying straight into the eighties and nineties) and humming, "You're gonna thank me even more in a second."

"Why do you say that?" Loki whispers against Tony's mouth, his question halfway lost in the not-quite kiss they're sharing. This time, he drapes his arms about the man's shoulders to keep him where he is, close and real and too flawless for words. It's much easier to get physical than it is to be softhearted.

"I have food for you," Tony mumbles into Loki's jaw. When Loki turns his head to give him a slightly inquisitive look, he adds, "It's vegetable lasagna."

Have you ever had  _that_  feeling, that feeling where it's like the stars are in perfect alignment and even though the sun isn't shining on you, it's doing just that somewhere else in the world and you're absolutely  _delighted_  with that fact, and colors seem more vivid to your eyes and everything is fascinating in the most beautiful of ways and the night is cold but you have a blanket to curl up in or a person to snuggle up with and that simple act of reaching out for something or someone warm is the most accurate description of happiness you can think of? That's the feeling the words ' _vegetable lasagna_ ' fill Loki with.

"I love you so much," Loki half-sighs, half-laughs, and it becomes obvious for the umpteenth time how well Tony knows Loki and how synchronized their wants can be when he kisses him again without being asked or sought to, when he pulls him up into a sitting position and nuzzles his nose into his cheek and succeeds ten times over at getting him to forget about everything but the warmth pooling in the pit of his stomach and the way it feels to be something cherished. Loki almost purrs with pleasure.

"Let's get you fed, shall we?" Tony hums, and he's giving Loki this impossibly adorable, puppyish sort of smirk only Loki would ever get the chance to see as he runs his hands down his biceps, over his elbows, and to his thin, pale wrists, and he squeezes them affectionately a moment before he presses a quick, loving kiss to the inside of one of them, and  _shit_ , Loki scarcely feels like himself anymore, and by  _himself_ , I mean bitchy and pessimistic and full of all the negative vibes Tony's so talented at sucking out of him, and while we're here, might I shed some light on a question that's been floating around in Loki's head for the past few months?

A lot of times, Loki thinks to himself that he can only be who he really is when he's around Tony, and it's a well-documented fact that when Mr. Stark is in his company, he's nearly the opposite of the thundercloud of a person he usually is. Does that mean that he's not as awful as he makes himself out to be, or that Tony has a knack for altering the very fiber of his identity? Does that mean that his personality is a suit of armor – something he can easily slip in and out of – or that he hasn't been  _himself_  for nearly twenty whole years? Are all of these correct assumptions? Is it true that squares are rectangles?

Loki is far from finding the answers to any of these inquiries,  _especially_  when Tony's trying to assist him in his mission to make his body work with a pair of crutches, which might as well be called a twin set of death sentences when he's got Twizzlers for arms and legs. Oh, and his armpits are going to hurt  _so fucking_ _ **bad**_  after awhile. Happy day, right?

"You know, I could just carry you everywhere," Tony comments as Loki limps his way across the living room and to the kitchen. He's got one hand wrapped around Loki's elbow – tightly enough to catch him if he stumbles but not so that he's unable to move comfortably.

"Imagine how well that'd go over when you're bringing me to class or taking me to the grocery store," Loki replies, only a little sharp around the edges. "Wouldn't  _we_  be a spectacle?"

"I don't care," Tony snorts in that offhanded, beautifully insolent way he has, that way that has Loki both head over heels for him and incredibly aggravated with his existence. He follows Loki into the kitchen with a tiny smirk, adds, "I'd be helping you and you'd be off your feet."

"And getting quite fat at the rate you're going with this whole breadwinning thing," Loki jests, laughing quietly at the tiny pinch Tony gives his elbow.

Now, at the very moment that Loki and Tony walked into the kitchen, Thor and Sif were busying themselves with whatever wonderful Italian dishes Tony decided to get for them (five bucks says he bought them the most unappetizing items on the menu), and although Tony, Fenrir (who is sniffing about around the dining table, by the way), and the fly on the wall wouldn't be able to tell you so, Loki was eyeing the two of them as surreptitiously as he possibly could, reading their body language and watching as they bumped sides like silly high schoolers and were generally really stupid and sweet with one another. Sif was scooping a forkful of spaghetti into Thor's bowl as Thor was smacking a kiss to the crest of her cheek, and suddenly, Loki was full of questions again (unsurprisingly). I suppose it wouldn't hurt to list them while they're relevant.

1.  _How exactly does Thor feel about Sif?_

2.  _If Thor doesn't love her, why is he being so cozy with her?_

3.  _Is he stringing her along for his own pleasure?_

4.  _Is he actually capable of being_ that _much of an ass?_ (Of course he is.)

5.  _And if Sif loves Thor, why does she treat him the way she does?_

6.  _Is she protecting herself?_

7.  _Also, why is Loki jealous?_

8.  _I mean, what kind of sense does it make for Loki to get all ruffled about Thor showing affection to his sort of-kind of girlfriend/fuck-buddy when it's second nature for him to go ballistic if the man so much as_ touches _him?_

9.  _Is it true that squares are rectangles?_

These are the sorts of questions that went flying through Loki's head the moment he saw Thor and Sif at his kitchen counter, and although they seemed very critical when they first occurred to him, Tony's pinch distracted him enough to make him start laughing, and when he starts laughing, both Sif and Thor look up at him with these extraordinarily perplexed and intrigued expressions plastered on their faces. It quickly occurs to Loki that Sif has never heard him really laugh before, and seeing as he's never been a particularly smiley person, it makes sense that Thor and Sif would look at him like he's some kind of alien for uttering such an unusual sound. Oops.

"I'll serve your plate, okay?" Tony says after a moment, effectively breaking the somewhat awkward silence that's fallen over the kitchen. He aims a gentle, playful smack at Loki's behind – one that has Loki chuckling again and Thor seemingly on the verge of a stroke – and instructs him to, "Go ahead and make yourself comfortable."

Loki easily (or not, considering his leg) obliges, sitting himself down at the dining table and propping his crutches against the wall behind him. He has to take a few seconds to breathe deeply so that he doesn't end up howling in pain after he's got himself settled, and once he's able to sit still and be at least a little human, he amuses himself by watching Tony, Thor, and Sif poke around at the counter like three wolves passive aggressively fighting over scraps of meat, afraid to touch each other but forced to share the same space. It's kind of hilarious, actually.

Things get a lot less funny once everybody's seated at the table, though, because it's pretty much impossible to make conversation without talking, and  _really_ , why the hell would Loki want to  _talk_  with Thor or Sif, especially when they're  _together?_  The only noise in the room for about two and a half minutes (an incredibly uncomfortable period of time for near-silence, mind you) is the sound of forks and knives clinking against the porcelain dishes everyone is eating off of, maybe the occasional  _clunk_  of a glass against the table if you're listening close enough. Loki is absently inspecting the lasagna-smeared leopard on his plate and playing footsie with Tony beneath the table when Thor decides to speak up.

"Fandral said he'll cook dinner for us if you ever need him to," the blond announces, drawing six eyes his way. Cue yet another pregnant pause.

"He did?" is all Loki can manage, and as soon as it's out of him, he realizes how impossibly  _dumb_  his response is. He briefly imagines himself drowning in pasta sauce.

"Yeah," Thor replies, shoveling pasta into his mouth and doing a stellar job of making a pig out of himself. For fifteen whole seconds (Loki's keeping count), Thor's face is a mess of tomato sauce, parmesan, and stringy, dangling spaghetti noodles; for five more, it's masked by the flimsiest of paper napkins, and while Loki's imagination is barreling down the road it is, he's making his brother out to be a pasta monster with noodles for hair and meatballs for eyes in his heat. Ha.

Once Thor has composed himself enough to speak again, he says, "He's a culinary student."

"That doesn't mean he knows how to cook," Tony comments. In response, Loki kicks him as hard as he's able to, Thor glowers at him the slightest bit, and Sif – rather surprisingly – chuckles.

"He does alright," Thor grumbles, and even though it kind of sounds like he's trying to defend Fandral's abilities, Loki knows simply by the way Thor is  _looking_  at Tony that his main objective is asserting his opinion (which we  _all_  know matters so much). For the third time in less than five hours, Loki wants to die.

Tony does this quirky,  _I don't agree with you but I'm not going to actually say that_  sort of thing with his eyebrows, spearing a ravioli pillow with his fork as he retorts, not taking his eyes off of Thor's, "I'll take your word for it."

I'd like to take this opportunity to point out that despite the fact that Tony's being an impudent asshole (that shouldn't surprise  _anyone_ ), this is actually his way of socializing with people, and it's the  _only_  way he knows  _how_  to socialize with someone else if he isn't charming his way into their bed or isolating himself from them, and Loki is the sole person at this table who's aware of that, and he's kind of going  _insane_  due to this useful-yet-damning piece of knowledge, and how is he ever going to make Thor understand why he's in love with Tony if all his brother sees is the too-ostentatious, ultra-thick, not-so-pretty exoskeleton the man constantly struts around in?

(Hint: He won't be able to, not for many years.)

"Tell him I appreciate it," Loki practically mumbles when it becomes apparent that Thor isn't going to dignify Tony's statement with much more than a thinly-concealed grimace and that Tony isn't planning on ceasing to eat his ravioli in a manner that manages to be obnoxious and cheeky but not disgusting or gratuitous. Everything goes completely silent for a few moments after he's spoken, but Loki is too scared and/or aggravated (it's pretty hard to tell the difference in a situation like this) to raise his eyes and watch the scene playing out before him.

And then – "Steve said he'll help, too."

Loki should get a goddamn  _trophy_  for his oft-mentioned self-control, because if it weren't for that wonderful personality trait of his, the circumstances of his life would probably be much different than they are at this very moment. He wouldn't have  _any_  sort of kinship with  _any_  member of his family, for one. He wouldn't be blessed with the lovely house he's staying in (which is ninety-nine percent Frigga's doing, by the way). His relationship with Tony would be radically changed, that's for sure. He probably wouldn't even be  _alive_  if he didn't have his precious self-control.

Oh, and there would be lasagna everywhere right about now. And Loki might be screaming. Yep.

"Why does he even  _know_  about my injury?" is what comes out of his mouth instead, and the quiet, slightly clipped tone of his voice has everyone at the table looking at him like he's spontaneously transformed into a feral cat or something – a reaction that says  _a lot_  about how Loki feels about Steve Rogers and his willingness to aid him (which doesn't even make  _sense_ , to be honest).

"I told him on the phone earlier," Thor replies around a rather large mouthful of spaghetti. He says it like it's no big deal that he's done such a thing, and, unsurprisingly, that ratchets Loki's irritation up quite a bit more.

"But  _why?_ " Loki counters, mere centimeters from burning holes into Thor's stupidly hairy, stupidly golden, stupidly  _stupid_  face with his eyes and his eyes alone. Lord knows when he developed such a superpower, but ever since he mastered it at the startlingly young age of fourteen, it's been extraordinarily effective in fighting the evil forces of moronic family members and their asshole friends.

"Uhm, because I wanted to?" Thor answers, sounding just as radiantly proud and enlightened as he did the last time he had a Spectacular Idea That Somehow Pertains to Loki's Life For Whatever Reason™. "I thought that maybe he'd wanna help you, and he did want to help you, and  _I_ wanted him to want to help you, so yeah."

He'd like to thank the Academy.

"I don't  _need_  Steve's help," Loki huffs, only pausing so that he can chew on his lasagna without shedding his table manners – things he alone tends to value.

"Uh, correction," Tony blurts, raising an eyebrow just slightly when everyone turns their eyes on him. "You don't  _want_  Steve's help."

"Oh, thank you so much, sweetheart," Loki lilts without missing a beat, ever melodramatic and raging with sarcasm. He narrows his eyes at Tony in a glare that would be a hell of a lot more intense if it were directed at Thor (oops), says, "I was terribly confused about the difference. It was driving me absolutely  _nuts_."

Thor looks like he's caught between excitement towards Loki's snapping at Tony and anger towards Tony's working on Loki's nerves. As you can probably imagine, this indecisiveness makes for a hilarious expression worthy of a thousand Kodak moments.

Rather than getting upset (and  _really_ , it's not like Loki expected him to when arguing usually constitutes as  _flirting_  between the two of them), Tony smiles, holds a defensive hand up, and replies, "I was just making an observation."

"Oh, and you're just so  _good_  at observing, aren't you?" Loki throws back, his fork hitting the side of his plate with a harsh, metallic  _clang_  when he drops it and regards Tony directly, and there's heat in his eyes as well as in his voice when he focuses his sharp, jade green eyes on his boyfriend, when he props his jaw against his fist in a display of the oddest combination of dominance, exasperation, and intrigue.

Tony isn't at all slow to respond to Loki's semi-suggestive remark with a pass of his own. He looks downright  _devious_  when he purrs, seemingly ignorant of Thor and Sif's presence, "I'm  _more_ than prepared to show you firsthand."

Without warning, Thor develops a dry cough of immense proportions and Sif finds it incredibly appropriate to start giggling like a sixth grader, and suddenly, Loki realizes that he and Tony are the only adults in the room (Tony hardly counts as one, to be honest), and he's back in the days when he and Thor were children being forced to witness their parents' romance. Even  _then_ , he was more mature about listening to Frigga and Odin flirt with each other, and Thor was just as flustered as he is right now.

"Oopsie," Tony mumbles with a smirk that's almost hilarious in its irony and the total lack of sheepishness that accompanies it. A short-lived, imperceptible little smile sneaks onto Loki's face in response, one only Tony's able to catch the tail-end of.

After the initial discomfort that settles over the room after that sudden drop in intensity passes, Thor grabs hold of his nerve again and asks, ever so tactful, "So what's so bad about Steve?"

And just like that, Loki's going from zero to sixty in two seconds flat, setting his face in a dark, stormy scowl, snatching his fork up off his plate, and snapping, "I don't have to answer that question."

That fortunately deters Thor for a few promising moments… until Tony opens his big mouth again to say, "It'd be great if you did, though."

" _Tony_ ," Loki half-whines, turning to glare at said man a second time in a way that's somehow both beseeching and accusatory.

"But, no," Tony interjects before Loki can say anything further, and Loki has to physically force his lips shut so that he doesn't end up  _screaming_  at the man, has to clench his hands into fists to keep himself from reaching out and  _slapping_  his boyfriend when he points out, "You never want to talk about why you hate Steve so much."

"Maybe because the two of you would instantly shut me down if I tried to," Loki replies, gesturing frantically between Tony and Thor.

"Maybe because you're not always right," Thor comments.

You could hear a pin drop in the room after Thor says that, and it's like watching a cobra readying itself to strike the poor, helpless creature it's chosen as its prey to see how Loki turns on his brother, his eyebrows raised and his gaze hard and resentful.

And you know, it's not just his pride that's to blame for the anger that flares up inside Loki at Thor's words (though it is a major player in this ballgame). It's the fact that Thor is audacious enough to say such a thing to him when he  _himself_  is constantly convinced of his own inherent  _rightness_ , the fact that he would take  _one_  difference of opinion between them and blow it enough out of proportion to insinuate that  _Loki_  – who is possibly one of the most self-hating people in the Western Hemisphere – is so arrogant that he believes it's an  _impossibility_ for him to be incorrect or mistaken. And all after that wonderfully enlightening conversation they had in the bathroom.

But Loki doesn't decide to call Thor out for that. Oh, no. Instead, he turns back to his food, disregards Thor's insult, and says, almost clinically, "He's an asshole." When everyone goes still and shocked (because  _oooh_ , Loki  _swore_  at the dinner table), Loki adds, "That's why I don't like Steve."

"Steve  _isn't_  an asshole," Thor huffs in that never-wrong manner of his.

"Oh, he isn't?" Loki retorts. "This man that won't hesitate to rip you a new one if you so much as  _look_  in a different direction as him  _isn't_  an asshole?"

"He's a great friend, Loki," Thor argues, the beginnings of irritation creeping into his voice.

"And he's the most responsible guy I know," Tony puts in.

"Okay, so he's a good friend and he's responsible," Loki snaps, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest. "Your saying so doesn't change my opinion of him, and it doesn't automatically invalidate the fact that I've spent over five years watching him act like a dick to anyone who doesn't measure up to his standards."

"You'd like him if you got to know him better," Thor insists. His brows are knitting closer and closer together, his fists are growing tighter and tighter, and his posture is getting tenser and tenser with each passing second, and honestly, no matter how much Loki understands his brother's frustration with this whole situation (mainly because he's often in the same position concerning Tony), it's virtually  _impossible_  for him to see Steve in a different light after he's known the man for so long – never mind the fact that twenty-five percent of said impossibility is due to straight-up stubbornness.

"I don't  _want_  to get to know him better, and I'm not obligated to," Loki nearly  _snarls_ , glowering at Thor like he would  _strangle_ him if he could get away with it, like the man doesn't have the ability or the daring to reach across the table and club him in the jaw.

" _Why_  don't you want to get to know him better?" Thor demands. He throws an exasperated hand into the air as he adds, practically roaring at this point, "Every time Steve tries to talk to you, it's like he's ruined your  _life_  or something."

(That's because he  _has_ , in a lot of ways.)

"He  _wanted_  you at his party," Thor goes on. "He wanted you at the homecoming game. Shit, Loki, if I had a dollar for every time Steve asks about you or says he wants to hang out with you, I'd have, like… a ton of dollars."

"I  _don't_ _ **care**_ , Thor!" Loki almost  _shrieks_ , dropping his fork onto his plate again and shoving his fingers into his hair with the sole intention of simply  _ripping it out_. He shuts his eyes for a moment – if only so he doesn't have to see his brother while he tries to achieve something like Zen for a second or two – then breathes, "I  _don't_  care, I  _don't_  have to like Steve or hang out with him or care about what he wants, I  _don't_  have to do  _anything_  I don't want to, I  _don't_ –"

"Can you just  _stop_  being such a hardass for at least two seconds?" Thor cuts Loki off, effortlessly slipping from the realm of anger to complete and utter childishness.

"Can  _you_ just stop trying to argue with me?" Loki retorts.

"Can  _you_ just stop being argumentative?" Thor counters, and at this point, he looks like he'd have little-to-no qualms with slamming Loki into the ground right now.

Unfortunately, Loki shares those sentiments, but before  _anyone_  can do any body-slamming or face-caving, Sif ( _yes_ , she  _still_  exists, everyone) raises her voice to let out a desperate, " _Hey!_ "

Loki and Thor tear their eyes away from each other to look at Sif, who is holding a cautious-but-commanding hand in the air and glancing between the two of them like she isn't sure whether to be intimidated by the astounding viciousness they've shown towards one another (a viciousness that's fascinating when you think about the fact that they wouldn't show it to anyone but each other) or aggravated with their behavior. She keeps the room uncomfortably – yet blissfully – silent for several lengthy, heavy-footed moments with the divine female power of her exposed palm before she asks, "Can I say something?"

Loki almost says ' _No_ ', but because he's incapable of refraining to do so when his mouth is open and Thor is too baffled to speak, Sif goes without an answer for a few incredibly long seconds. Then, like an unexpected, slap-in-the-face sort of miracle, Tony replies, "Please."

( _Wow._ )

Sif gives Tony a brief, half-shocked, half-grateful glance before she's turning back to Loki and Thor and saying, "So, it's apparent that Loki dislikes Steve."

"That's a bit of an understatement," Loki mumbles, garnering himself an irritated glare from Thor.

" _That being said_ ," Sif continues, scarcely missing a beat and easily succeeding at exerting her dominance over this situation again. "I personally don't think it'd be conducive to Loki's recovery if Steve were to help out, because, I mean – how helpful would he actually  _be_  if the person he's trying  _to_  help is intolerant of him?"

At first, nobody speaks. They simply react like so:

Thor just  _stares_  at Sif like she's suddenly become a stranger to him, his eyebrows furrowed and his mouth hung slightly ajar. Such a reaction could be due to the fact that the woman is kind of defending Loki, or it could be warranted by the  _words_  that came out her mouth while she was doing so.  _Conducive_  and  _intolerant_  aren't exactly terms that come up in everyday conversation, and it's quite doubtful that Sif's ever used them around Thor White and her fellow dwarves if Thor's expression is anything to go by.

Tony somehow manages to look both displeased (with the lack of Steve in this formula to Loki's recovery, let's assume) and satisfied (probably with the imminent resolution of the monstrous argument this conversation has become). He's resigned himself to finishing off the food on his plate and refusing to look at anyone in particular.

Loki is just  _astonished_  with this turn of events, and more than he's nursing the residual bitterness he has towards Sif (as well as Thor, Fandral, Volstagg, and Hogun) for all the bullshit that happened on Tony's birthday, he's actually  _thankful_ for the woman's words, even if they  _aren't_  specifically aimed at supporting him, and that  _scares_  him, because he isn't  _ready_  to forgive her yet, and he doesn't think he'll  _ever_  be ready to forgive her, and he's having the same dilemma he had with Tony not twenty minutes earlier – this uncertainty with how to appear appreciative but not vulnerable and, in Sif's case,  _friendly_.

So he ends up just watching Sif with the most impassive expression of all  _time_  on his face until he figures out how he's going to respond to the beautiful piece of her mind she's given everyone at the table, until it occurs to him that he can totally kick Thor's  _ass_  by being self-righteous and overly-relieved about his gratitude.

" _Thank you_ ," he finally explodes with, surprising everyone with the sheer weight of his acknowledgement. He holds a hand of commendation out towards Sif, looks directly at Thor, and adds, "That didn't take  _rocket science_  to figure out, now did it?"

Thor relocates his gaze to his brother, sheepish and aggravated and defeated all at once. He gives a heavy, uncharacteristic sigh, grumbles, "You could have just  _said_  that."

"It should have been obvious," Loki snaps with an air of finality, effectively depleting any room for argument and discouraging any further discussion on the matter of Steve Rogers and his injury.

After that, all conversation rapidly peters out and dies, and the atmosphere swiftly returns to the state it was in before Thor decided to start talking in the first place. Tony finishes his dinner first, but he acts like he hasn't until Loki has swallowed the last of his lasagna and gulped down the rest of the root beer he's been sipping on. Then, the man makes it his mission to remove their dishes from the table and dump them in the sink while Loki excuses himself from the table and embarks on a somewhat lengthy journey to the bathroom.

And you know, even though it was barely apparent then, Loki  _did_  pick up on Thor's mention of Steve's highly unusual interest in him and his company, and said mention confused the  _hell_  out of him –still  _does_  confuse him – considering how openly churlish and bitchy and downright  _unhappy_  he is in the man's presence, and suddenly, he thinks that he dislikes Steve  _that_  much more _because_  of his absurd fascination with him – but not nearly as much as he's mystified and almost  _transfixed_  by him (ew) – and he kind of  _despises_  himself for feeling the way he does just when everything started to make sense to him, and once again, today has been absolutely  _radical_.

* * *

Tony is helping Loki strip down and ease himself into a bathtub full of near-steaming, hilariously (and by  _hilarious_ , I mean  _almost half a bottle of bubble bath because Tony wouldn't know how to run a bath if his life depended on it_ ) sudsy water after he's followed him to the bathroom, and – rather surprisingly – he  _doesn't_  attempt to feel him up or come onto him in any way. The most he does is give Loki a thorough once-over before he's submerged in what could easily pass as a hot spring, and though neither of them say anything about the unusual lack of electricity between them, Loki suspects that it has something to do with the obviously petulant mood he's in.

Oh, well. None of that really matters when he's hissing in pain and attempting to position his leg in a way that doesn't have him wanting to cry or scream or expel any other noise of the negative and miserable sort. He ends up propping his heel against the lip of the tub and breathing himself into the fuzzy sort of forced-calm that makes you feel almost dizzy with serenity, then slowly sinks into the bath until his nose is a centimeter from kissing the surface of the water and his vision is obscured by white, frothy bubbles.

And then – "Are you trying to drown yourself?"

Loki smiles a bit, raises his chin to say, "Not this time."

Tony pauses for a moment, seemingly taken aback, then asks, "Does that mean that you actually  _do_  try to drown yourself every time you take a bath?"

Loki hums softly in acknowledgement, idly stirring the suds floating above his chest as he replies, "Sometimes I think about it, but I haven't actually  _tried_  to do it in years." He closes his eyes and immerses his head completely in his bathwater for a moment – fear grabbing hold of him for the entirety of the time he's under – before coming up for air and letting his gaze fall upon Tony, who's quite literally perched on the toilet seat like a bird or an owl and watching him with the beginnings of worry touching his stare.

"What?" Loki asks, tucking his damp, inky hair behind his ears.

"You're not happy," Tony says, and the words come out of his mouth more like he's making a simple observation than he's answering Loki's question, but Loki knows that he's doing both at once because he's aware of the fact that Tony speaks in ways he doesn't mean sometimes, and that in spite of how suave and sociable and so very  _loquacious_  he is, there are times when he doesn't know how to talk.  _At all._  And that's seriously one of the saddest, most beautiful things Loki knows about his boyfriend.

"Well,  _duh_ ," Loki retorts, tilting his head towards Tony in a manner that could have been condescending if he'd only screwed his face up the right way. He softens his words with a hint of a smile, drones, "When am I  _ever_  happy?"

"When you're with  _me_ , if I'm lucky or you're manic," Tony answers, and when Loki's expression tightens the slightest bit in response, the man shakes his head and drives his fingers into his hair, says, "Forget I ever said that."

"Why?" Loki asks, resting his cranium against the wall behind him and letting his eyelids fall halfway-closed. "You're right."

Tony makes this  _tsk_ ing, displeased sort of noise at that, shifting his weight a bit as he sighs, "For some odd reason, that doesn't just  _make my day_  like I thought it would have."

Loki can hear it clearly – the very first sparks of attitude cropping up in Tony's tone, his words, his demeanor, like the foremost notes in the sonata that is the turbulent temperament he will most certainly possess if Loki doesn't do something quickly, and  _really_ , Loki  _cannot_  have Tony being all pissy with him when he isn't exactly a ray of sunshine himself and the man is the only source of emotional support he has at the moment.

(Also, it might say a  _lot_  about their relationship when the slightest change in one of their moods can send the other into a complete tailspin in about as quickly as a nanosecond.)

 _So_ , because Loki is as crazy for Tony as he is perceptive of his state of mind and eternally after his own interests, he casts his eyes the man's way, hooks his left hand over the lip of the tub, and catches his boyfriend's attention with a quiet, "Tony?"

Tony meets his eyes, silently questioning and not quite as aggravated as Loki feared he'd be yet.

"Come here," Loki murmurs, turning his wrist upwards so that he can beckon Tony to him with a flick of his fingers. He makes sure to look especially longing when he attaches a soft, "Please," to the end of that request, all round, pretty eyes and slightly pouting lips that are scientifically  _proven_  to make Tony's heart skip a beat or two.

Most people would call that kind of behavior  _manipulation_ , but in Loki's eyes (which arguably aren't the best pair of peepers to be looking through when his perspective has been almost permanently warped by years of degradation and inferiority and a pathological need for control), he's just appealing to Tony's better interests – of which include him being adorable and in need of his everlasting love and affection.

Tony only hesitates for a brief, somewhat telling millisecond before he's hopping off of the toilet seat and moving over to the side of the tub, where he sinks to the ground (presumably so that he can see/speak with Loki better than he could standing up), crosses his legs Indian style, and asks, "What's wrong, babe?"

Now, if today had gone at least a  _little_  better than it has and Loki wasn't truly on the verge of walling himself up  _emergency_ -style – a style that entails the sort of self-defensiveness he exhibits only when things are going their very  _worst_  and the thought of simply  _communicating_  with other people makes him shaky and nauseous with anxiety – Loki would  _definitely_  tell Tony exactly what's bothering him and why it irks him so, but because none of that is the case, he'd much rather go without answering the man's question for a long,  _long_  time.

So he  _doesn't_  answer him… not immediately, anyways. Instead, Loki leans over the edge of the bathtub and, without warning, presses a moist, insistent kiss to Tony's lips. He doesn't say anything; he just waits for Tony to kiss him back, waits for the feeling of the man's fingers wrapping around the back of his neck and, thoughtless and just a bit eager, brings his dripping hands up to cage his boyfriend's face and keep him close. And he draws that kiss out for as long as he possibly can, and maybe it's the lack of oxygen and maybe it's their moods and maybe it's the fact that he's naked and wet and submerged in borderline-scalding water, but by the time they've pulled away from each other, they're both practically  _panting_  with want and Loki feels like a goddamn  _genius_  for acting the way he did and Tony is tracing the curve of his bottom lip with the tip of his tongue and that has to be the most perfect sensation of  _all time_. No joke.

Of course, perfection quickly makes itself scarce when Tony murmurs, his voice sing-songy and his breath brushing against Loki's mouth, "As wonderful as that was, it wasn't an answer."

What an asshole.

"I don't want to talk about it," Loki sighs, hastily leaning forward to kiss a trail from the corner of Tony's mouth to the sharp square of his jaw and hoping that the man will latch onto the bait he's throwing his way (which he won't, unsurprisingly, because no matter how physically inclined he is, he  _isn't_  going to let Loki seduce him out of his mind if it's evident that something's the matter).

" _Why?_ " Tony asks, gently pushing Loki backwards with the hands he has clasped to his neck. Loki can't stop himself from scowling as soon as he's face-to-face with Tony's quietly frowning, obviously worried, slightly jarred expression, can't help but pull his hands away and cut his eyes downwards, avoidant and stubborn, when the man says, "If you clam up on me, you're just going to feel worse later, and believe me, I'd rather that you cried a lot right now than cried a  _whole_  lot later."

It's funny because it's true, but Loki can't seem to make himself smile.

"Loki, look at me," Tony orders when it becomes apparent that Loki won't respond or acknowledge him unless he's forced to. Loki only obliges when he feels Tony's thumb stroke the side of his neck, touch the place where his jawline terminates at his earlobe.

And then they just kind of watch each other for a long, comfortable half-a-minute, and Loki's pretty sure they're having one of those moments where they're communicating without words and being really deep and wistful and dramatic until Tony just throws him for a new one by saying, extremely out of the blue, "Is it Steve?"

Have you ever closed your fingers in a car door? Or, say, had someone flush the toilet while you were in the shower? Maybe you've been an Olympic runner one second and a paraplegic from the waist down the next, and you've found yourself face down on the ground you were just jogging on with a wounded sense of pride and possibly a broken nose?

If you haven't had the displeasure of experiencing any of the above, think about how Loki felt when he fell earlier this afternoon. That kind of shock and humiliation and anger is what slaps him in the face when he hears Steve's name, and  _goddammit_ , he absolutely  _cannot_  bring himself to give a damn about salvaging  _anyone's_ feelings when he blurts, unthinking and uncaring, "Get out."

(And you know, right now, when Thor isn't there dividing his attention and he's  _naked_  and  _wet_  and mere fucking  _inches_  from Tony and they're  _touching_  each other and he's  _upset_  and did I mention  _naked and wet_ , Loki realizes that he isn't just angry about the fact that everyone in the world –  _including_  Steve Rogers – wants him to be  _friends_  with Steve Rogers. That he is throwing up every red flag he happens to have in his box of red flags that mean  _hey, he's not all right_  and – dare I say it again –  _ **naked**_ _and_ _ **wet**_  and literally in the palms of Tony's hands, and Tony is thinking about  _Steve_ _ **Fucking**_ _Rogers_ , who, by the way, is  _not_  the man who sacrificed a grand deal of his self-doubt and dignity and vanity and fear to give himself up to him and have mindblowing sex with him and do the impossible by  _falling in love with him_  –  _ **that**_ , my friends, is making Loki highly fucking  _pissed_.)

At first, Tony gives Loki this perplexed, uncertain look that quickly makes it obvious that he's not sure if he's joking, but Loki isn't slow to make himself clear, isn't slow to nod his head the slightest, ugliest bit and say, "No, I'm serious.  _Get out_."

Tony's expression pinches with surprise and distress as Loki breaks free of his hold, as Loki sinks back into his bathwater and glowers at the wall opposite him and purposely pays attention to the pain in his knee because it makes him feel more powerful, more incensed, more trifling and wounded and fucking  _justified_ , dammit.

And then, because they've done this tango many,  _many_  times before, Tony's face morphs into a mask of passive, knowing,  _irritated_  acceptance, and he asks, "What happened, just now?"

Loki tips his chin up enough to retort, "What do you  _think_  happened?"

"Well,  _I don't_ _ **know**_ , Loki! Why do you think I asked you?" Tony snaps, suddenly five times as cross as he was just  _seconds_  before. When Loki looks at the man, he's halfway to glaring at him and he's got his elbow propped against the edge of the bathtub and a tense, crab-clawed hand in his hair, and if Loki pays close enough attention, he can see that Tony's not just mad – he's _hurt_ , and he's hurt because he  _isn't talking_  to him. And that kind of changes  _a lot_.

Loki watches Tony for awhile after he's come to that realization, tongue-tied and strained and just  _begging_ with his eyes for the man to understand him, silently telling him how very, very pained and inconvenienced he is by the necessity that he speak, and here he goes on making words happen, asking, quite rhetorically, "Do you understand how unbelievably  _sick_  I am of hearing and arguing and  _talking_  about  _Steve?_  Do you know how  _insane_  that's making me?"

Tony blinks, his expression softening a tad. He doesn't say anything, so Loki assumes that either the man is unable to argue with him or it's okay for him to continue.

"Everywhere I go, he's  _there_  in some way," he goes on, raking his thin, nimble fingers through his dripping hair and relocating his gaze to the expanse of water before him. "Either someone is talking about him or trying to make me like him or he's just right up in my fucking face, acting like we're the best of friends or something." The word ' _fucking_ ' flew out of his mouth completely by accident, but it's pretty indicative of how aggravated he really is. He scoffs quietly, plunges his hand back into the water just this shy of unceremoniously as he comments, "Hell, every time I so much as  _think_  about Steve, I want to shoot myself in the head."

"Why does he bother you so much?" Tony asks, his tone low and even, and  _now_ , he's  _not_ being confrontational or nosy or annoying just for the hell of it – he's actually trying to find out what's so  _wrong_  about Steve.

But because he's avoidant by nature and – despite that he's  _still_  livid over Tony's persistent concern for and about Steve –  _doesn't_  want to upset Tony anymore than he already has, Loki simply replies, "I thought I clarified that ten minutes ago."

"But you  _didn't_ , not really," Tony says, leaning over so that he can cross his arms over the edge of the tub and resting his chin atop his elbow. He gives Loki this  _look_ , this look that's questioning and confused and lost all at once, and more than it makes Loki feel claustrophobic, it makes him feel like he's being unreasonable by attempting to salvage his feelings (which he _isn't_ , by the way). Tony frowns a little, tilting his head just slightly and asking, "What has he ever done to you?"

You see, as much as Loki has vented and complained and cried to Tony about his life, he's never done any of that over matters concerning Steve, and do you know  _why?_

Because Steve is one of Tony's best friends. Because Loki knows that if he  _did_  decide to bitch about the man, he'd probably do a world of  _awful_  when it comes to him and Tony's relationship –  _especially_  now that they're dating and  _especially_ since he isn't entirely sure about how Tony feels about Steve at this point in time. Because he  _can't_  lose Tony's love and respect (or at least his intimacy) over  _Steve_ _ **Fucking**_ _Rogers_. Because he has more sense than that, believe it or not.

But now Tony wants him to break his silence, and  _honestly_ , Loki is too worked up about today and tired of not talking about this and confused about what exactly Tony's trying to get out of him and  _why the_ _ **hell**_  it matters so much to stop himself from  _finally_  explaining his feelings. It's not like this night could get any  _better_ , anyway.

Loki isn't looking at Tony when he says, voice soft and eyes down, "Steve… Steve has stolen almost everything that's ever mattered to me from right beneath my fingertips since the day he came into my life."

There's a lengthy, anxious moment of quiet after that's out in the air, during which Tony just kind of gawks at Loki, obviously taken aback, and Loki contemplates the possibility of elaborating on what he just said. He probably should if he wants Tony to stop looking at him like he's insane and/or on the verge of having a nervous breakdown (both of which he  _is_ , by the way).

"As soon as he moved here, he had Thor," Loki concedes, leaning back against the wall behind him once more and maintaining the lack of eye contact he has with Tony. "The two of us were already growing apart, but the second Clint introduced Thor to Steve, there was nothing I could do to stop him from running away from me and straight to Mr. Perfect himself." He sniffs wetly, rubbing an index finger beneath his nose and forcing himself to breathe at a normal pace else he has an anxiety attack or something.

"Then he stole my best friend," Loki goes on. He allows himself to glance at Tony, but only for a split second; only long enough to see the shock and the bewilderment and the everything dreadful and painful and  _no, he_ _ **can't**_ _see that and not totally lose his shit_  all over his face, and then he's turning away to stare at the wall and he's practically  _breathing_ - _choking_ - _biting_  out, "He and all his friends spent a whole year torturing her, and by the time school started up again, she'd committed suicide and I didn't have a brother o-or a cousin or a-a-an  _anybody_  to lean on." Loki shrugs a brief, bitter shrug, then, squeezing his eyes firmly shut for an instant before he's adding, as if it's simply an afterthought, "Of course, then the accident happened, and even though he was  _so very interested_  in being my friend or whatever, did he come to visit me while I was in the hospital? Did he talk to me when I came back to school – a place where _everybody_  knew that I was literally  _out of my mind_  and couldn't get through a class period without crying or breaking down? Did he do  _anything_  but  _stare_  at me with his stupid,  _stupid_ , horribly pitying eyes while he, Thor, and Clint went on with their perfectly sane, therapy-free, athletic, popular kid, friend-filled, always-smiling, always- _happy_  lives?" He's crying, now, and he only knows it because the muscles and skin around his eyes are warm and he's inches away from  _hyperventilating_  as he answers his own questions with a soft, decisive, "No."

Loki takes a moment to wipe at his cheeks – a dumb, futile move when his hands are just as soaked as his face – and for about thirty seconds, it's all he can do to take deep, easy breaths and not come falling apart at the seams. When he lets himself behold Tony again – who's been so unusually quiet throughout the entirety of his rant (and I use the word ' _unusual_ ' not only because Tony is a chatterbox of a person, but because even when Loki vents to him, he isn't at all hesitant to put a word in every thirty seconds) – the man's eyes are wide and dark and just brimming with something like disbelief and sympathy and his brows are forming a tense little pyramid in the center of his forehead and his mouth is hung open in amazement and  _shit –_ that's almost enough to make Loki stop talking right then and there, but he's  _not_  done yet, and if Tony wanted an epic declaration of all his feelings and agony, an epic declaration of all his feelings and agony is what he's going to get.

That's why Loki doesn't stop looking at his boyfriend when he says, "And then he stole you."

Tony's features  _finally_  do something different, then, something that doesn't entail anything solicitous or shocked. Now, he looks defeated –  _distraught_ , even – and even though Loki doesn't fully understand  _why_  the man would get so upset over him declaring what he just did, he isn't planning on shutting up or slowing down.

"By the time that happened and you'd told me that you had met Steve, I wasn't even capable of being surprised anymore," Loki muses, almost laughing as he speaks. He gives Tony a disaffected little smile, says, "I knew it was only a matter of time."

"Loki…" Tony starts to say, but like _hell_  is Loki going to let the man change his mind, like  _hell_  is he going to stop just when he's getting to the point he's been building up to.

So, he cuts his boyfriend off, cries, "And you met us both on the same day, too!" Tony freezes at that, goes still and rigid with fright when Loki shakes his head and babbles on, "Oh, and I _know_  I was an asshole to you and I  _know_  you weren't even  _remotely_  interested in becoming my best friend or  _anything_  but a notch in my bedpost at that point, and like I was  _ever_  going to be as flawless as  _Steve_ , but after awhile, I felt like I could have been, Tony." He blinks, and tears go tumbling down his cheeks. " _You_  made me feel like I could have been. You were my only friend, and you made me feel like a goddamn  _prince_  until that  _Steve_ _ **Rogers**_  came around to steal your love and attention and ruin my life with his perfect smile and his perfect face and his fucking  _responsibility_  and his knack for being a good friend or whatever the hell you and everyone else say he has – everything I  _don't_  have and never  _will_  have.

"I can't compete with him!" Loki exclaims, his voice high and desperate and his eyes shining with moisture. "He's mentally healthy and popular and strong and masculine and oh-so  _fucking_ charismatic, and what am I?  _Crazy_ , and  _misanthropic_ , and thin as a toothpick and literally  _this_  close to being a Disney Princess." He pinches the air for emphasis, watches the way Tony winces at the display. "He's the kind of person you  _dream_  about being with." He lowers his gaze for a moment, shaking his head in resignation. "I'm the kind of person you beat yourself up about wanting."

"Do you really think I feel that way about you?" Tony asks, and his words are unexpected in their suddenness and their coherency and the fact that  _wow_ , he managed to string together a whole sentence without Loki interrupting him. But he's staring at Loki with the same wounded expression he was wearing earlier, the one that says he's just as angry as he is upset, and _really_ , that he's getting pissed off right  _now_  is kind of  _infuriating_  for reasons that will become apparent shortly –

" _Yes_ , because you  _told_  me that's how you felt about me!" Loki retorts, instantly succeeding at rendering Tony silent again. "If I'm not driving you crazy, I'm running away from you, and you _know_  that, and  _I_ know that, and  _I_  can't change that about me and  _you_  can't change that about me and I'm not  _Steve_  and Steve  _wouldn't_  do that!"

Tony glances downwards, at a loss for words and outdone by Loki's deduction. He begins to open his mouth to say something, but the only thing that comes out of him is a muted, stuttering sigh of a breath that reminds Loki just how much alike the two of them are, reminds him that maybe he  _should_  start to ease up before he does something he's going to regret more than he usually does.

Sniffing softly, Loki scoots on over to the side of the bathtub – causing the water to undulate and swell when he does –, curses when his change in position disturbs his sprain, and reaches for Tony's hand, wrapping his fingers around the man's and saying in a much calmer – yet just as strained – tone than he was using before, "I'm not trying to belittle our relationship. I promise you, I'm  _not_. And I know I'm more than just your second choice."

Tony's eyes meet his after that comes out of him, and despite that he still appears to be hurt and forlorn by the earful Loki gave him, there's a trace of hope in his gaze.

That such ray of light is why Loki can't bring himself to look at Tony when he murmurs, "It's just that… what I learned tonight was that no matter how injured or distressed or vindicated I am, Steve will  _always_  be better than me, even if it's because he wants to be my friend." He spies his reflection in the bathwater beneath him, watches as it ripples once his tears hit its surface. "For all I know, you're still infatuated with him."

The air grows cold once Loki says that, and at first, neither of them can make themselves say anything to the other. Loki knows he dropped a bombshell by admitting what he just did, and he knows because his heart feels heavy as well as hollow in his chest, knows because his throat is getting tighter and tighter and he can't keep his eyes open without a  _river_  accidentally falling out of them, knows because he can physically  _feel_  Tony's stare – hard and intense and impossibly penetrating even when he can't see it.

But then – without warning and without Loki expecting him to (he honestly assumed that Tony would finally come to his senses and realize that he's actually the worst person to  _ever_ maintain a relationship with, then proceed to hightail his ass out of there for good) – Tony takes his face in his hands and forces him to meet his eyes a moment before he's kissing him again, firmly and intimately and in a way that makes it difficult for Loki to even  _think_  about Steve or Steve and Tony or Steve and himself or Steve and  _anybody_  anymore, and now, they're the way they were before this conversation even began and (ironically) what Tony's giving Loki  _isn't_  an answer or a solution of any sort, but it's wonderful and sheltering and Loki can't afford to think twice about taking it.

And once they've pulled away for oxygen at last, Tony wastes no time in swiping his thumbs across Loki's cheeks and murmuring almost incoherently, "I love you, Loki, I  _swear_ , I  _love_  you, and I meant what I said on my birthday, I  _did_ , I  _still_  do, I  _promise_." He pauses just long enough to swallow, then asks, "Do you remember what I said, what I said when you told me you wanted me?"

Loki nods without even having to think about his response.

Tony smiles one of those nervous, involuntary, oxymoronic sort of smiles that tend to appear on his face when he's totally  _flipping out_  on the inside but he's trying  _desperately_  not to show it (smiles that Loki can see through in a heartbeat). He moves to lean his forehead against Loki's, says, "You know how weird this is for me and how unbelievably  _awful_  I am at doing this whole heart-to-heart thing…"

"I'm sorry…" Loki starts to apologize, but Tony stops him with a brief, shushing kiss on the lips before he can even get into the thick of his remorse.

"I didn't say that to make you feel bad," Tony half-chuckles, shaking his head in conjunction with his words. "I said that because it's true and because it's the reason why I was too fucking stupid to realize that you were so upset about me and Steve. But I need you to realize something, okay?"

Loki lets out a quiet, breathy sob, blinking some of the moisture out of his eyes as Tony (quite disgustingly, but in a really sweet way) wipes at the mucus running from his nose and replying, "I'll try."

"You better, because I don't touch just  _anybody's_ snot," Tony huffs, grinning when Loki laughs at his jest. His face softens the slightest bit when he says, "I don't want you to compare yourself to Steve or think that he's better than you because he's not as loud or intense or flawed or  _different_  as you are, you understand?  _Especially_  not when it comes to me." He touches the corner of Loki's mouth with the thumb that he  _doesn't_  have covered in mucus. "There's a reason why  _you're_  the one I'm sitting here on a bathroom floor to talk to, trying to be a better person for instead of… instead of just wishing and giving up because it's too hard." Tony's eyes tighten momentarily, but the bitterness Loki sees in them runs away just as fast as it came rushing in. "I don't have that kind of friendship with Steve – that's all  _you_ , baby."

Loki can't help it, can't stop the shock of that revelation from furrowing his eyebrows and forcing an incredulous, "Really?" tumbling forth from his lips. He he's fully aware of how ridiculous he sounds, questioning Tony like that, but  _honestly_ , he's spent the past year absolutely convinced that  _Steve_  has been the special one between them in terms of their relationship with Tony – _not_  the other way around – and to be told otherwise, well… it's kind of alarming.

" _Really_  really," Tony replies, his mouth curling into a smirk once more. He waits until Loki finds it in himself to give him a tiny smile in return before he deems it appropriate to kiss him again, and even though it's kind of a gross, awkward exchange (considering all the snot and tears and bathwater mixed into it), it isn't anything short of magnificent.

"Now, clean yourself up so I can take a shower and you can get in bed, alright?" Tony instructs, reaching for the washcloth hanging over the edge of the tub so he can toss it at Loki's face and quickly making apparent that  _yes_ , things are going to be okay for the remainder of the night. Loki just manages to catch the cloth before it hits his nose.

* * *

After he's sure that Fenrir's been fed and that Thor doesn't need anything (because honestly, he's pretty much completely adopted his brother at this point and his injury hasn't changed that one bit), Loki lets Tony carry him to bed, get him into some clean, loose-fitting clothes, and elevate his sprain with pillows he's stolen from Thor's room. Then, he spends about fifteen minutes staring at his television without really seeing it, rubbing his fingers into the fur on Fenrir's forehead, and fighting sleep in favor of sorting out the mess of his thoughts and waiting for Tony to finish taking his shower so he can crawl into bed with him.

Now, before you up and assume that Loki is having something of a crisis right now, I want you to know that  _one_  – you'd be right if you were planning to, and  _two_ – what's happening at the moment occurs nearly every single night as he's attempting to go to sleep. The only things that distinguish tonight from the usual are Loki's lack of ability to busy himself with any cleaning he might have to do around the house or cross the  _universe_  that is his room to grab his laptop or a book to read and the fact that he's awaiting Tony's presence only a little shy of anxiously, and as a result, he's pretty much  _stuck_  with his clusterfuck of a thought-space and completely deprived of a way to run from this situation. And that kind of makes him tearful – whenever he manages to pause long enough to realize how edgy he actually  _is_ , mind you.

First, his thoughts begin to revolve around what tomorrow might turn out to be, and Loki finds himself taking a stab at fashioning a plausible idea for how the next day will work out. He quickly deduces that he probably won't have time to bathe himself tomorrow morning, nor will he be able to cook breakfast for Thor ( _or_  Tony, or possibly even  _Sif_ ) due to the fact that he can't even  _stand up_  without the aid of crutches, so that leaves him with around fifteen minutes he normally  _wouldn't_  have, but before we get too far ahead of ourselves, let's back up forty words or so and drop in on the subject of Thor.

Loki hasn't yet forgiven his brother for what transpired today, and  _that_  – the very existence of  _that_  as a thing that  _didn't_  happen and  _won't_  happen for about a week or so – is the first thing he thinks about when the man's name crosses his mind. He actually isn't even sure if he's forgiven Thor for the shit he pulled on Tony's birthday – in spite of all that hugging and crying they did the morning after – and that such uncertainty of the most infuriating sort has him wanting to be entirely awash with anger and depressed out of his mind and living on his own and totally friendless and just  _all by_ _ **himself**_  in his unhappiness, because  _honestly_ , he's seriously questioning what exactly is the point of trying to open himself up and reach out to people when they're as stupid and ignorant as they are and they'll hurt you at every single turn you happen to take simply because they're too selfish and inconsiderate to take the time to count how many scars they've left on you or realize that they've made a mistake for longer than the ten minutes it takes them to shove their twenty-four-hour pain pill of a fucking apology down your throat, and  _oops_ , that would be Loki reaching up to cup his face in his hands and letting out a long, ragged breath and catching the frustrated little tears welling up in his eyes with the tips of his fingers.

He tells himself to stop crying, then, figuring that he's already done enough of it throughout the afternoon. Plus, he doesn't want Tony to walk into the room, see him having an emotional breakdown, and (because the man has a  _serious_  messiah complex, if you hadn't already noticed) raise  _hell_  trying to make things all better for him. He can only handle so many serious discussions and catharses in one day.

So, Loki takes a long moment to sniffle and blink his tears as well as his fury away, spreading his hands in front of him and mindlessly inspecting all ten color-coated nails before him, each painted the color of gold leaf.

By the time he reaches the pinkie finger of his right hand, Loki's wondering about Steve again, and more than he's upset or irritated by the thought of him, he's confused by what he learned about him today.  _Why_  would Steve want to be his friend? And why would he be so  _interested_  in him? Why would he be interested in him  _at all_  when the two of them couldn't be anymore different and when Loki has spent the past five years hating his guts sort of-kind of- _really_ fucking openly? It's not like Steve actually even  _knows_  Loki or anything, except he probably  _does_  to a certain extent, no thanks to Thor, Tony, and their tendencies to be wildly indiscriminate with the information they spout to everyone and their mothers.

And then Loki is all pissed off and worked up again, and the reason  _why_ he's all pissed off and worked up again is the fact that he's downright  _terrified_  of the prospect of Steve Rogers knowing him as intimately as he very well might, and there's a part of him that's threatening to start hating on Thor a second time, but he  _can't_  land himself in that hole, because if he did, he'd end up bringing both he and his brother back to the same horrible state they were in when they first became surprise roommates in the long run, and, in a more immediate sense, he'd do _exactly_  what he's trying not to and start crying hysterically – which brings him to yet  _another_  train of thought:

Thor is the only person who can make him scream-and-shout, bucketfuls of tears,  _I want to destroy everything beautiful and innocent in the world and I'm seriously considering suicide_  sort of cry. Don't get me wrong – people like Steve and Freyr and Odin have definitely made Loki shed quite a few tears before, and he's cried  _for_  (not  _about_ ) Tony countless times, but his brother is virtually the sole human being that can have him instantly out of control and wanting to  _end_  to some extent, and right now, that he's even  _acknowledging_  this, that today happened and that Thor is living with him and that he won't  _stop_  living with him for an indefinite amount of time and that the man's presence is restricting in all the ways that matter (because Loki can't dress the way he wants to without getting an odd look or two from Thor, and he can't paint his nails without being called ' _gay_ ' or ' _girly_ ' or a ' _faggot_ ' or any variation of ' _effeminate homosexual_ ', and he can't count on having his own goddamn house to himself when there are four dwarves and a football princess  _constantly_ in it, and he can't carry on with Tony in the way he'd honest to God  _adore_  to lest he stay with the man for a week or so and return home to find everything  _destroyed_ , and he can't risk upsetting Thor too much with his fucking  _personality_  or else he might end up getting trashed or turn into a villain or get in trouble with his parents) and that people think that because Thor lives with him, they're magically best friends again and that he  _cannot_  remove his brother from his home without angering Frigga, Odin, possibly Fandral, Volstagg, Hogun, and Sif, probably Thor, and most certainly  _himself_ , and that he can't even be wholly comfortable with having his boyfriend spend the day or the night or the week or the  _month_  with him because Thor wants to  _kill_  the man and that the very reason why Tony and he got as close as they did in the first fucking place is basically  _Thor_  and that nearly every facet of his whole entire  _life_ – whether it pertains to his family, his education, his love life, his social life, his innermost thoughts and feelings, his health, his self-image, even his motherfucking  _job_  (no thanks to that visit Thor paid him a couple weeks ago) – has been or is being affected by  _Thor_  in some way –  _that_  is making Loki have an anxiety attack, making him consider everything about his existence in an extremely negative light, because _oh my_ _ **God**_ , his world is so saturated in  _Thor_  that it's disgusting.

Honestly, a realization like this wouldn't be freaking Loki out so badly if only he was having it under different, brighter, not quite as sprained and not nearly as stressful circumstances, but alas – he has a headache now and Tony is not in bed with him and Thor is simultaneously destroying his life as well as making it an event he's going to look back on and say he _survived_  it. Less than gracefully, yes, and it's not like ' _survived_ ' is the greatest way to describe your living experience, but hopefully, you get the picture I'm trying to paint.

Loki is counting down from one-hundred and letting his mind revolve around the ice numbing his knee into near-total deadness when Tony slips into the room, clad in pajamas and hair a wild mess atop his head. Fenrir scrambles off of the bed as soon as he enters, and when Loki tears his eyes away from the ceiling and looks down, he's greeted with the sight of his boyfriend being backed into the door behind him by his darling husky.

"Hey, you," Tony laughs, scratching his fingernails against Fenrir's head and rubbing his hand down the back of the dog's neck when he pushes his muzzle into his palm. He glances up at Loki a moment later, this semi-surprised, somewhat perplexed expression quickly dominating his features once he does, and before Loki can compose his thoughts enough to question the look, Tony says, "You're still awake," like he was totally expecting otherwise.

All Loki can manage is a soft, sarcastic, "I concur." He can't even conjure up a snarky smile to go along with his words.

Tony smirks, amused, casually pulling away from Fenrir, dumping his dirty clothes in the laundry pile by the door, and asking, "How aren't you dead-fucking-tired right now?"

"I  _am_  dead-fucking tired," Loki sighs, his eyes following Tony as he walks around to the side of the bed and plops down on the edge of the mattress. A small, nearly imperceptible smidgen of heat pools in his belly when the hem of Tony's tank top rides up his back, and his voice is just the slightest bit throaty when he adds, "I was waiting for you."

"Why?" Tony chuckles. He swings his legs over and onto the bed and sidles up to Loki, the tiniest and most devious of smiles plastered on his face as he jests, "Couldn't sleep without me?"

Loki swallows thickly, meeting Tony's gaze only a little uneasily. "No," he replies, "I actually couldn't."

Tony's expression gradually sobers into something tinged with concern before suddenly growing tight with alarm, and then – completely out of the blue and much to Loki's surprise – "Are you shaking?"

And  _what do you know?_ , he  _is_  shaking. Not so much that you could pick it up instantly, but if you're sitting as close to him as Tony is and you're practically  _employed_  to detect things like this, you'd be able to notice the tiny tremors running along Loki's skin, be able to see the way his lips quiver whenever he isn't speaking, and  _oh_ , let's not neglect to mention the fact that Loki is strangely and unbearably breathless, enough that the supposedly simple task of  _talking_  is  _that_  much harder than it would normally be for him. All this is purely symptomatic of the anxiety attack Loki was trying to  _stop_  himself from having before Tony arrived. Look how successfully  _that_  turned out.

"Oops?" Loki laughs, flashing Tony a half-forced bone of a smile in hopes that the man will miraculously forget about the distress that's obviously written all over his demeanor and do something ridiculously sweet like kiss his eyelids or hold his hand or something.

But because this is  _Tony_  he's dealing with, instead of getting what he wants, he's rewarded with a faceful of scowling, worried boyfriend and an earful of ' _What's wrong?_ ' and ' _What happened?_ ' and ' _Don't tell me it's nothing_ '.

"Please, Tony, I'm  _alright_ ," Loki contends, just this shy of desperate. Quiet, unwilling hisses and groans escape him as he turns onto his side, extra-careful not to disturb his knee too horrifically, and he wraps a grounding, beseeching hand around Tony's forearm, says, "I'm just a little anxious right now."

"Baby, if you're legitimately  _shaking_ , you're  _not_  ' _just a little anxious_ '," Tony argues, but before he can start on his hour-long tangent about why Loki isn't okay (a fact he's already well aware of, thanks) and why he should start talking before he has a nervous breakdown or some sort of psychiatric episode and why he doesn't need to hide from him and all that beautiful,  _we're in a relationship so we need to be open with each other to a sickeningly ostentatious extent_  bullshit, Loki just lays his head against Tony's chest and curls up there, unassuming and without pretense and so reflexively you'd think he did it all the time.

(And just so you know, Loki  _doesn't_  do that all the time. Sure, he can be just as touchy-feely-huggy-squeezy as he can be with Tony, but he seldom  _ever_  puts himself in a vulnerable position with the man, he'd much rather drill a screw through his foot than make it apparent that not only does he need Tony's support, but that he needs his comfort, or his love, or his  _hold me and make me feel safe_  and not his  _tell me something heartfelt and important_  or his  _show me how much you care by fighting for me_. There's a world of difference between the three, I assure you.)

"Please," he repeats, softer, more weary this time. He draws his fingertip in small, idle circles along Tony's breast, listening to the sound of the man's heavy, solid heartbeat and the air working in and out of his lungs, and for a moment, he imagines that it must sound like a hurricane from inside a human ribcage.

Tony goes still at that, and even though Loki isn't looking at his face, he knows that there are two dark, uncertain eyes glued to the top of his head right now, and he knows that Tony wants so badly to  _physically remove_  all the hurt and the anger and the fear inside him, and he knows that he's probably breaking Tony's heart in a way that the man won't notice until he thinks about it one day when he's not there to make eyes at him and touch him and be all pacifying and wistful and somehow both Tony's most and least favorite thing all at once, and he knows he kind of hates himself for doing that, but more than anything, he knows that Tony  _still_  smells like Axe and rain and tobacco and motor oil, and he's not having an anxiety attack anymore, and he's not thinking anymore, and he can probably go to sleep now.

"I promise I'm not going to be upset about it in the morning," Loki adds, raising his head to look at Tony. He waits, patient and silent, for Tony to  _stop_  looking at him like he's on the verge of shattering like glass on cement, for Tony to let out a low, brief sigh and wrap an arm around his back and breathe, "What am I going to do with you?"

"Kiss me, maybe?" Loki teases, his voice barely even a whisper. Tony's mouth curves into this wide,  _gorgeously_  genuine smile almost immediately after he says that, and he leans forward to lock him in a long, breathtaking slick of a kiss, all lips and teeth and tongue and heat, and if Loki weren't exhausted and his leg wasn't out of commission and Fenrir wasn't  _right fucking there_ , nosing at the edge of the mattress like an inquisitive child, he'd be  _more than_  all over his boyfriend right now and caution would be a foreign, trivial concept to the both of them.

For now, though, he lets himself be content with the slightly damp kisses Tony is trailing up the side of his face, wraps his arms tight around the man's torso and shivers when Tony's fingers push through the hair at the nape of his neck and closes his eyes tightly shut until he doesn't need to try so hard to keep them closed and  _listens_  for it, hangs onto the very precipice of consciousness until he hears exactly what he's waiting for, almost like Tony's forgotten to say it up until this very moment – "Goodnight, turtledove."

**Author's Note:**

> Tada!
> 
> Now is around the time that I usually do my super-cool, super-derpy shout outs, so:
> 
> \- Paula, who, again, is one of my best friends and favorite people and everything sweet and light and wonderful in the world – I love you a lot and you've done more for me than I could ever ask for and more for me than anybody has in the relatively brief time we've known each other and I could gush about you forever but instead I'm just going to give you these forty-three pages worth of nonsense. Happy birthday, my dearest – you're absolutely mathematical.
> 
> \- Heather, who pretty much is my best friend – I just adore the hell out of you and I can't even imagine where I'd be without you and you're my favie and I literally cannot when I think about how much I love you and how much you've given me and you're basically the greatest person ever.
> 
> \- Isabella, who's been the sweetest thing and makes me irrationally and ecstatically happy every time she talks to me – I can't thank you enough for your enthusiasm and your adorableness and the fact that you exist in my life. Lots of hugs and kisses to you.
> 
> \- Bailee, who is absolutely, positively, wonderfully awesome and absolutely, positively, wonderfully wonderful – I'm really, really happy you came and talked to me and you make me ridiculously incoherent and you're so funny and kind and one of my favorite people to talk to and I'd squeeze the hell out of you if it were physically possible.
> 
> \- Nena, who is also unbelievably sweet and adorable and the Piplup to my Pikachu – I kind of adore you a lot and you're so cute and supportive and agh, you really deserve more than just a silly shout out at the bottom of a chapter, so expect something sweet and gift-y as soon as I have the time to sit down and draw you something proper.
> 
> Uhm, I wanted to point out that even though I didn't give a lot of information about Loki's best friend in high school besides the fact that she killed herself, in my head, she's Sigyn. I really wanted her to be Amora or something, but I have plans for her to appear in the future, so Sigyn it is (also, I don't feel like Amora would do such a thing). Also, if this chapter is a complete clusterfuck, I'm really sorry and you're more than free to help me out by pointing out a grammar or continuity mistake. Also, this is the first of two parts, so the next chapter is going to be a continuation of this.
> 
> Catch you all on the flip side. c:
> 
> \- Gabi.


End file.
